Music, podcasts and live-streams are in a moment of major growth.

In the last year 65.3% of Americans (218.6M) 70% of Canadians (26.6M) are tuning into digital audio every month, and with the rapid rise of working from home, the consumption of audio content has just exploded, meaning the opportunities for your brand to grow with audio ads are exploding too.

But gone are the days where the same ad would play on Radio on the hour, every hour, burning it’s jingle into your mind. Now your audience is moving between rooms, devices and channels throughout the day, looking for different content to meet their moods, and the resulting opportunity for always on advertisers is immense. With new privacy concerns on mobile and an increasingly ad-blocked world, many are turning to audio as a way to break out of these restrictions.

But with so many options, how do you create “audio ads” that will actually work?

That’s where programmatic audio ads come in.

Programmatic audio enables you to run audio ads through your demand-side platform (DSP), similar to running visual ads on Facebook or Instagram. By using a DSP in tandem with platforms like Spotify you can identify users based on key metrics like location, time of day, age, listening habits and serve up perfect audio ads that really hit the spot and live in your overall buying strategy. For more in-depth information on these metrics, we recently spoke to Spotify’s Ivan Pehar on our Podcast, The Recipe, about how Spotify has created a way to move with your audience throughout their day based on “Moods, Moments and Mindset” to help create these audio touch-points along the buyers journey.

So read on and we’ll break down the ingredients of creating an audio ad, from scripting to distribution to help your brand start their journey into the world of audio ads.

Types of Audio Ads

With audio ads, you can reach audiences while they listen to music, podcasts, streamed radio, or other forms of in-ear content with some seriously impressive engagement rates. According to Nielsen Media Lab, they can actually enjoy a 24% higher recall rate than visual ads.

To cook up your own programmatic audio campaigns, you’ll need to understand how audio ads are different from other channels, like search, display, video and connected TV (CTV).

On the surface it’s pretty obvious: With audio, your ads reach your audience through sound rather than through visual cues, and your information is relayed by Voice Over (VO).  But under the surface, the delivery of Audio ads can differ quite a bit from traditional display ads for social or search.

There are different types of audio ads, but they always share something in common: They are characterized by a voice over which relays your message to your audience.

In our breakdown we’re focusing on two main types of audio ads, Linear Audio Ads, and Native Audio Ads.

Linear audio ads are commercial ads that can be placed pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll (meaning before, in the middle, or after your content).

There are 2 types of units: pre-produced and native. Pre-produced are exactly that: they are produced in advance by the advertiser and then distributed via a DSP or the platform itself and inserted based on auction rates, metrics or other similar data.

When turning on a streaming app, you will hear a pre-produced commercial audio ad before the music or podcast begins playing, or, you might hear an audio ad while listening to a streaming channel. These are Linear ads.

You have definitely heard Native audio ads before: they are typically found in podcasts as scripted ads that are read by the show’s hosts. Remember all those “Try this VPN?” or “Hunt A Killer” ads? Those are Native to the programming itself.

Because there are fewer steps to creating a native ad (and less ways to track them), in this article we’ll focus on creating pre-recorded, or, Linear audio ads.

What makes great audio ads?

Every audio ad is made up of several key components, but all of them revolve around the most important part of your audio ad: its message. 

From the script itself to the voice actor used for the VO and background music (called a bed), every detail of your ad contributes to the impact of your message to the listener. Much like visual imagery on mobile can “Stop Thumbs”, a well produced audio advertisement can “stop ears” and pique interest in your listeners, as well as establish a key part of your brand by establishing an audio identity that’s recognizable and matches your full brand guidelines.

For our perfect audio ad recipe, we’ve broken down 4 key steps you’ll need to follow:

1.) Write The Script

It all starts with a tight script. For any audio ad, the script should be simple, with a clear message that includes a key value proposition and a clearly defined call to action. There’s no need to write a novel here, you’ll want to get to the point quickly for maximum impact. While humour is always a great tool, don’t lose sight of the key message in trying to be too clever or funny with too many jokes that will lose impact with repetition.

Most linear audio ads are usually 15 or 30 seconds long. When writing your ad script, remember that the best audio ads tell a story, in clear language, that keeps the listener engaged and makes the ad memorable. Asking a rhetorical question, or, hiring 2 actors to have a conversation are both good ways to “tell a story” in a short time.

Pro-tip: It’s also good practice that your brand name should be repeated 2-3 times throughout the ad to help recall and build interest.

2.) Find your Voice Over talent

Once your script is finalized, it’s time to find a voice actor, or, actors. You’ll want to find a voice that is on brand and relatable (or appealing) to your target audience, so deep dive into your personas or content marketing matrix and try to establish who the best “voice” will be for each.

For most audio ads, a friendly, conversational tone is going to get the best results. You’re not looking for the “Say it for the people in the back” theatrical types of voices often heard in radio ads, because with programmatic audio you’re reaching people when they’re already actively listening.

Your casting should be appropriate not only for your brand identity and personas, but for the time, place and message for your ads. Running a campaign for listeners late at night? A softer voice may work better than a more upbeat voice earlier in the day, while still remaining on brand. Trying to get your audience excited about game day? Something more exaggerated might be the right play. Only you will know what fits your personas.

3.) Select your bed

The music used in an audio ad (called a bed) can help establish the tone and mood of the script.

Use minimal background music, so it doesn’t distract, and add subtle effects and environmental sounds to create imagery in the listener’s mind. Whether the script is serious or upbeat, the music can have a dramatic effect on the audience and their perception of the message, and effects like the ambience of a room or natural sounds can establish a setting quickly and without the need of your voice actor.

When selecting music for an audio ad, you’ll want something that’s well produced with clear instrumentation, that helps build a mood and doesn’t overpower the narrator. Avoid music with lyrics that could muffle the message, and ensure anything used is royalty free for commercial use.

4.) Record and Mix

You have your script, music and your voice actor so all that’s left is to record your ad.

The script delivery should be slow-paced, with a consistent tone and tempo, and the music should be mixed to be audible without taking attention away from the key message.

Remember: Don’t rush it—but make sure you stay within the ad length of 15 or 30 seconds.

When mixing the final edit, consider the transitions in and out of the ad—you don’t want them to feel jarring to the listener, so a smooth fade or sound effect can be helpful.

Ensure your final ad is also mastered. Mastering is the process of leveling your audio so that each voice, instrument and effect are clear and of the same consistent volume.

Add Audio Ads to Your Digital Strategy

Now that you’ve created a great ad, it’s time to run your digital audio campaign through your DSP or work with your agency to bring your media strategy to life. (Still looking for help building your brand with audio ads? Let’s talk.)

With programmatic audio you can buy targeted ads from all the major audio publishers using one system, or, you can go all in on a single platform using self-serve tools. Your ad platform will enable you to use the same audience targeting parameters from your native, display and social campaigns, making it simple to integrate audio into a brand-wide plan alongside your other channels.

How to measure Audio ads performance

If you can’t measure it, you can’t scale it. And audio ads come with their own unique challenges in the digital advertising landscape.

When it comes to measuring the results of your audio ads, the IAB’s Digital Audio Buyer’s Guide 2.0 provides a large list of digital metrics to quantify reach and effectiveness.

The most basic is ad playback (the number of times it was heard)  as well as the Listen Through Rate (LTR), which is number of times the advertisement was played until the end. These metrics are similar to video advertisements on Facebook and Instagram ads.

On a more brand-centric level it is possible to evaluate the user’s response after exposure to the campaign, as you would with a traditional brand lift study.

But on a high level, remember that in many digital audio sessions the screen remains inactive: the consumer is simultaneously engaged in another activity that is incompatible with viewing a traditional banner or CTA that results in a “click”.

In these situations, there are “low-tech” tracking alternatives based on the your clear and concrete call to action (CTA) within the advertisement, and on the users’ engagement level.

An basic example of this tactic would be promotions activated on the web by a code communicated in the audio message (ie: use code “Abacus10 for free shipping”)

Ultimately, the results of digital audio can best be calculated by implementing post-listen surveys to measure brand recall and purchase intent.

A basic ROAS can also be achieved by observing the direct impact on sales during the implementation of the campaign, either in the online store or in-store.

Recap: 7 steps to great audio ads.

1. Develop a message that’s clear and to the point
2. Incentivise your audience with a clear CTA
3. Build a mood with music and sound effects
4. Keep it casual and conversational to build trust
5. Stay on message and keep your ads brief for maximum impact
6. Test your ads to find the best performers for each campaign: one size does NOT fit all.
7. Create your measurement KPI’s and track, track, track!

Getting help with your audio ads campaigns.

Sometimes to meet the demands of the digital audio market your brand may work best with an agency to help create a campaign that really connects with customers. At Abacus we’re always ready to help you create not just an “audio ad” campaign, but to build a multi-touch, holistic growth engine you can count on. Take a look at our past work and see for your self, and when you’re ready, become a partner.

Great marketing always begins with great content, and great content requires a sense of purpose, direction, and objectives. Often our marketing messages can get lost in the endless stream of social calendars, ad managers and email engines as we race to keep up with our audience.

While it’s tempting to launch a campaign or brand and start posting right away, having a plan that includes a high-level view of your audience, how they consume content and how they engage with your brand or business helps keep your messaging front and center in their minds.

The Content Marketing Matrix isn’t a new concept, but it’s a tried-and-true strategy for helping guide your content marketing efforts so you’re making the best use of your time, money and brand capital.

To help you get a head start on building a new brand or programming a social campaign, don’t think of a content marketing matrix like a calendar, but as the compass that keeps us on course, focused on delivering content that’s effective for our audience, and choosing the right results to measure.

The best marketing is rarely reactive, instead it is a continued investment in engaging your audience at every stage in their journey and staying present in their lives.

Read on as we break down the steps you’ll need to build an effective content marketing matrix and implement it for your audience.

Identify a Buyer Persona Framework

Determine a buyer persona structure that will help you make sense of the different motives, desires, and expectations that each buyer will encounter during their journey. The most effective content marketing matrix will have between 3-5 personas, as well as as many awareness stages as your plan requires.

Obviously, different businesses have different customers, and those customers will each have a different journey and different needs that your brand can help hopefully satisfy.

This audience may enter your brand conversation online after discovering you in any number of ways, so you can’t guarantee a linear progression as you would through the more traditional marketing funnel.

Ensure that the “motivated” or “self starting” customer is part of your personas, and your marketing will become less robotic and more authentic, naturally.

If you haven’t already done so, you can read our article on creating buyer personas for your target market to start building your Content marketing matrix the right way.

Wait… where’s my funnel?

Unfortunately the classic “marketing funnel” doesn’t fit many modern marketing strategies, especially using a Content Marketing Matrix.

In an interview at the B2B Marketing Lab’s Grow with Inbound 2019 event,  HubSpot’s CEO and co-founder, Brian Halligan spoke about replacing the old Marketing Funnel with the flywheel model. Halligan discussed how startups he refers to as “experience disruptors” (like Amazon) have conquered the marketplace by creating a “new experience” for their customers.

The content marketing matrix is a tool to help businesses do just that by applying the concept of the marketing flywheel to your content: both paid and organic. Unlike a classic funnel, which seeks to narrow the flow of attention to produce a result, flywheels create continuous power in engines…In this case, a growth engine for your brand.

Power, momentum, force, friction, stored energy; these are the words associated with a flywheel, and, much like an engine needs a flywheel to store energy, brands need a marketing flywheel to garner the power of loyal customers.

The flywheel is similar to the funnel in that it represents the customer journey in several stages, but differs that customers may enter continuously rather than only “top-funnel”.  Customers may do their own search online for products, get  a recommendation from a friend, read a review, see a video, follow an influencer….. the entry points to modern marketing are endless.

It’s the job of your content marketing matrix to provide the customer with what they need at any point and move them into a continuo

Map the Buyer’s Journey

A successful content marketing matrix requires you to map out your customer persona’s journey within the target segment, identify the main events that occur during that journey, and should reveal the details required for a buyer to progress to the next step of their journey.

The most common stages in a content marketing matrix are:

• Entertain (Awareness)
• Inspire (Interest)
• Educate (Consideration)
• Convince (Purchase)
• Delight (Advocate)

Let’s break these down:

Entertain

Making content fun, engaging and even viral is the best way of creating a buzz and generating awareness. Content like giveaways, competitions, podcasts and videos gets people talking, actively engaging with your brand and gives you data for follow up content.

Inspire

Inspirational content is great in connecting with emotional decision makers especially in the later stages of the buying process. Make it about people and relate to them. Show them reviews and ratings about how other people felt or let them tell it for themselves in a public forum. Tell a beneficial brand story in a blog post.  Influencer partnerships and media endorsements also associate your brand with an inspiring person, bringing their following to your business too, so don’t pigeon hole your content marketing matrix with only self-produced content.

Educate

If you have a lot of fact-based content or technical information to share, you need to make this clear and easy to understand for your customers so they can continue to the conversion stage without hesitating. Guides and info-graphics are often easy to follow and add a visual impact. Reports, articles and press releases work well for giving more information and detail.

Convince

Prove that your product or service works. Show off your product features, let people try things via interactive demos and make calculations and guides easily accessible and understandable for everyone. If your product has health benefits, back them up with studies, interviews or live conversations with experts. Convincing content has a huge influence on purchase decisions and is often one of the last considerations before a customer converts.

Advocate

After the sale, make your customers evangelists by giving them tools to share their purchase and satisfaction online.

Share recipe ideas that use your kitchen equipment, or re-share their workout videos using your yoga mats.

Send surveys and reward engagement.

Continue to delight and engage them (without resorting to heavy handed sales tactics) and include their stories in your communications. Offering exclusive upgrades,  giving referral codes or other post-sale rewards…the possibilities are endless. By continuing to do more than “sell sell sell” with your customers you can help power the marketing flywheel and think more critically of what to do after the sale to keep powering growth.

A content marketing matrix can really help identify the gaps in this phase and introduce highly effective content into your arsenal.

Decide on Appropriate Content Mediums

Focus your content marketing matrix on the channels that best reach your buyers at each phase of their journey and determine which content types will make best use of your team’s human and capital resources while ensuring the content takes advantage of each platform’s unique features.

Don’t spend time chasing trends: if your potential audience is older and your marketing is focused on local communities, YouTube or Facebook would be most effective, rather than younger skewing channels such as TikTok or Snapchat. If you’re focused on lead generation for B2B services, a clever LinkedIn campaign might be your best bet.

When it comes to a content strategy that fully engages customers at every stage in their journey, you may quickly discover gaps in your communications from visualising each channel in a content marketing matrix, rather than applying a “write once, publish everywhere” approach.

This is where you can also determine a mix of paid, organic and earned media and how it can be best used to amplify your message.

Put It All Together On The Content Marketing Matrix

Fire up your content marketing matrix template and begin to add and map this information in a spreadsheet, with the stages in the buyer journey on the horizontal axis and the audience personas on the vertical axis.

This will be sufficient for the early development of a content marketing matrix, but as your organization becomes more targeted with your content you will likely want to add a second vertical axis for “type of content” or “content focal point.”

This will depend on the complexity of the sale. In more complex campaigns, there may be multiple pieces of information required to progress a buyer from one stage to the next.

In those cases, you may think about developing one or more pieces of content to address each of these factors.

Once a piece of content is completed, the overview should be converted to a short one-to-two line summary that can be recycled in buyer and marketing communications with your audience at that stage of their journey.

This statement should also state the value proposition that it focuses on, or the key piece of information it is meant to educate a buyer on to help them get through their journey.

Some types of content may bridge multiple stages in your content marketing matrix, you can find e-news, ebooks, demo videos and events. These types of content often have potential to go any way you like because of their flexible nature. With your brand voice in mind, add your own spin here and make it relevant to what your customers want.

The key takeaway here is to identify the gaps in your strategy so that you’re not leaving customer’s behind in their journey.

Identify the tone for each stage of your Content Marketing Matrix

Your approach can dramatically impact the way content resonates with a buyer. In the education and awareness stages of the buyer journey, provocative and engaging content will typically make the largest impact.

This can come in the form of engaging and attention grabbing content intended to stick out on the Internet and in a target buyer’s inbox, or through content that helps buyers identify and self-diagnose problems. The tone of this may be more casual, and the content more entertaining than informative. Don’t try to “sell” at this stage.

In the later stages of the buying process the content will need to have more of a focus on justifying the value of the solution and establishing your brand’s value proposition.

This will be determined by the needs of each buyer to get through each phase of their buying process and convert.

Conduct a Data-Driven Content Audit

Perform a content audit to determine what content your brand currently has on hand, and determine if the content can be spruced up or altered to meet the requirements of any of the quadrants in the content marketing matrix.

These article variations will generally be the highest impact pieces relative to the effort they require. Sometimes, content can be personalized to fit the needs of multiple buyers or slightly altered to satisfy needs in different buyer stages, other times you may need to produce highly specific content for each persona.

You never want to force content to fit into specific stages or target certain buyers, however.

This personification and targeting makes a huge impact on the effectiveness of each piece of content. There is never a ‘one size fits all’ approach to content marketing that will be as effective as producing content for specific audiences at each stage in the marketing journey.

Identify the Most Important Content Support Needs

Depending on the channel, frequency, audience and style of your content, you will need to ensure there is sufficient support to keep your audience engaged.

If producing content for a particular channel requires assistance from an experienced social media agency, freelancers, in-house staff or other vendors, as well as production costs, licensing for stock materials, hosting and so on, take that into consideration when budgeting your campaigns.

Consistency is key to producing effective content, both organic and paid. Ensure you have a sufficient inventory of creative assets before launching your content marketing matrix.

Evergreen content is content that doesn’t have an expiration date. In other words, it adds just as much value in a year as it does today. It’s focused on a topic that will always be relevant and enticing, regardless of trends, seasonality, or the current 24-hour news cycle. Therefore, Evergreen content might be a better use of budget even if it costs more than producing seasonal content for a social platform.

Deploy the Content Marketing Matrix

Create a content production version and go-to-market team version of the content matrix. The production version of the matrix will map out future content production and needs to connect with your brand’s content calendar, while the production version may be more informal and be fluid as you work to find the right cadence and strategy for an effective campaign.

The go-to-market version of the content matrix will map out the current content assets that the company has for each segment, which helps the marketing team identify the best pieces of content to share with buyers in different phases of their buyer journey, as well as help assign any assets or labour that may be needed for production.

Here you can also determine what content will be promoted via paid channels, partnerships or remain organic, as well as any metrics for success you may want to measure.

Download your copy of the Content Marketing Matrix here.

Looking for an agency to help your brand grow online? Abacus can help. Give us a shout, we’d love to help you out.

Heading photo by: @sashapritchard via Twenty20

On April 20, 2021, Apple’s latest iOS 14.5 software update for mobile devices was made available to the general public. The update introduces privacy features that are intended to go the extra mile towards protecting the privacy of customers on their network.

One of the big changes being phased in with the latest iOS update has to do with data sharing. Currently, if you want to turn off data sharing on your iPhone, you can go to Settings > Privacy and switch off that function.

With the iOS 14.5 update, users will be prompted to make that decision anytime an app is downloaded from Apple’s App Store. Users will see a pop-up asking if they’d like to grant the app permission to track activity across apps and websites owned by other companies, with the choice to opt-in or out.

The fear that marketers have is that, given the choice, most users will choose to opt-out of being tracked across the internet. This puts Facebook, Advertisers and Businesses in a precarious position, because Faebook relies heavily on that data to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns to generate desired conversions and interactions.

This update will apply to all Facebook-owned apps in Apple’s App Store, including their core app, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Additionally, it will impact apps that use Facebook’s Audience Network for monetization.

What’s new with iOS 14.5?

The primary method advertisers have at their disposal for tracking conversions in their paid ad campaigns, like sign ups and purchases, is the implementation of ‘tracking pixels’ embedded in the code of the landing pages the ads use as a destination.

The Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics Tracking Code effectively operate the same, in that they both ‘track’ a website visitors time and interactions on a website so that goals can be tracked against it, and help to properly attribute user interactions to the ad that is responsible for that interaction.

Businesses can place as many pixels as desired on their website for as many marketing campaigns currently active. Typically, you want to add pixels to every page of your website to track all of the conversions that page generates.

In a nutshell, iOS 14.5 will require apps in the App Store to obtain permission from users to track them using Pixels across apps and websites for advertising and measurement purposes. In other words, users of Apple devices will now have the ability to ‘opt out’ of having their website interactions logged by various tracking Pixels installed on websites for the purposes of attributing conversions to paid ad campaigns.

Apple’s plan for accomplishing this is by introducing what they’re calling an AppTrackingTransparency framework, a series of protocols that app developers must implement within their apps as part of the terms of service for being listed in the App Store going forward. Apple summarizes the function of the framework in the most succinct way possible:

 The AppTrackingTransparency framework presents an app-tracking authorization request to the user and provides the tracking 

authorization status.”  [1]

If you’re an app developer and need to update your app to meet this new App Store requirement, you can follow the steps on Apple’s website here. (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apptrackingtransparency)

What are Facebook & Instagram doing in response to the iOS 14.5 update?

Facebook’s response is the implementation of new protocols of their own in an effort to comply with Apple’s Transparency framework, which includes Apple’s ‘SKAdNetwork API’, as well as an in-house solution, Facebook’s ‘Aggregated Event Measurement.’ [2]

Apple’s API is required by ad networks to install on their platform in order for advertisers to continue attributing iOS mobile app installations back to paid advertising, which accounts for user opt-in or opt-out verification. [3]

Facebook’s ‘Aggregated Event Measurement’ solution allows for continued measurement of web events from iOS 14.5 devices, with a large caveat that will be brought up later.

According to Facebook, these newly added protocols will “restrict, aggregate and delay reporting, while continuing to enable the measurement of campaign results, with limitations.” [2]

What changes can you expect to see in Facebook’s backend after iOS 14.5?

What are some of these ‘limitations’ you ask?

Get comfortable, the list isn’t short.

The major changes businesses and advertisers can expect to see within Facebook Ads Manager fall under 4 major categories: Campaign-Level, Custom Audiences, Attribution, and Reporting / Testing

Campaign-Level

• To continue to reach iOS 14.5+ users for the purposes of Mobile App Install campaigns, you will be required to create separate iOS 14 app install campaigns with one ad account per app, nine campaigns per app and five ad sets per campaign of the same optimization type.
• iOS 14.5 app install campaigns are not available for Reach and Frequency buying.
• If you use web events to optimize and measure your campaigns, you are now limited to optimizing for no more than eight events on each domain you own. Ad sets that are optimizing for a pixel conversion event that is outside of the 8 events made available to you, will be turned off.
• Once your campaign is published, you can’t turn on or turn off the iOS 14.5 campaign toggle. You’ll have to turn off or delete your campaign.
• You can use the following campaign bid strategies, lowest cost, cost cap, minimum ROAS or bid cap. However, if you choose the cost cap or minimum ROAS bid strategy, your ad set should be scheduled to run at least 3 full days.

Custom Audiences

• Events from iOS 14.5 devices that opted out of the Apple prompt on Facebook cannot be used to include users in Website Custom Audiences.
• Custom Audiences can no longer be made for optimization events outside of the 8 conversion events your account will be permitted.
• Mobile app custom audiences for inclusion are no longer available.

Attribution

• Long attribution windows where Facebook won’t have full event data will no longer be supported. 28 day click-through, 28 day view-through, and 7-day-view through, are no longer supported.
• Facebook is also  introducing modeled reporting for a 1-day click-through attribution window that accounts for events no longer reported. To adjust for data sharing limitations, Facebook will stop using  modeling for 7-day click through and 1-day view through attribution windows. You can expect reporting for these attribution windows will be partial and not include all events.
• Data-Driven Attribution, the ability to assign fractional credit for a conversion to Facebook touchpoints based on their estimated incremental impact, will also no longer be available for iOS 14 app install campaigns.

Ads Reporting & Testing

• Delivery and action breakdowns are not supported for offsite conversion events. This includes demographic breakdowns such as age, gender and region.
• Lift Measurement will not be allowed for iOS 14 Mobile App Install and Mobile App Events campaigns.
• Self-serve conversion lift, also known as Holdout Tests in the Experiments tool, will no longer be available.
• The ability to measure the incremental impact of both Facebook and another publisher’s advertising through the Cross-publisher conversion lift beta will no longer be available.

For a more detailed list of all the changes being made and limitations being applied to Facebook’s Ads Manager and Ads Reporting, visit ‘How Apple’s iOS 14 release may affect your ads and reporting’ (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/331612538028890?id=428636648170202).

What does all this mean for advertisers?

With Facebook no longer being able to track the web behaviours of a majority of Apple device users after iOS 14.5, the first thing you’re likely to notice is a decrease in conversions for active campaigns and an increase in associated conversion costs.

Audiences that are targeting both iOS and Android devices are likely to shrink causing some of your Ad Sets to enter the ‘Limited Learning’ Phase (where the Ad Set isn’t generating enough Optimization events to exit the Learning Phase).

Ads Reporting will also be impacted by the update. Because the data won’t include users who denied permission for tracking and will only track a small number of objectives, reports will be either inaccurate or extremely difficult to reconcile with other reporting and attribution platforms.

And as if all of this wasn’t a massive pain point for advertisers already, the real hassle for most will be the new campaign requirements and restrictions that will warrant having to rebuild many campaigns, and in some cases, an entirely new Ad Account. The investment in time cannot be understated here, which is why Facebook is strongly urging advertisers to act right away.

What steps can you take to mitigate disruptions to your Facebook paid ad campaigns with iOS 14.5?

If your business has ad campaigns running on Facebook and Instagram, or have plans to do so  in the near future, there are several steps you can take to reduce or eliminate any disruption in campaign delivery, and mitigate any loss of data visibility when reporting and attributing conversions.

Step 1: Consult Resources in Facebook Business Manager

Facebook has a couple of resources you can tap for guidance on how to navigate the changes resulting from the iOS 14.5 update. Our first recommendation to businesses and advertisers actively running campaigns on Facebook & Instagram is to consult these sources:

1. Resource Center tab in Facebook Ads Manager (available on Desktop only): 

• The ‘Resource Center’ tab in Facebook Ads Manager has a customized list of actions for each ad account to help prepare and comply with the changes associated with iOS 14.5. Take a look now and see if any actions are flagged, and be sure to take action immediately.

2. Ads Ecosystem Hub: 

• The Ads Ecosystem Hub is a website located in the ‘Facebook for Business’ resource centre aimed at being a comprehensive guide for businesses and advertisers, “evolve your advertising strategies based on the technical changes emerging from mobile operating systems and web browsers.” You can visit the Hub here: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/ads-changes/guide

3. Event Measurement:

• We’ve given advertisers tools to toggle and prioritize which app events are to be used for ads, in line with their legal commitments and platform terms for data privacy and data use. [2] This tool can be accessed by clicking on ‘Events Manager’ within Facebook Ads Manager.

Step 2: Update your App SDKs & Prepare New Ad Accounts if Needed

If you run App Install campaigns for iOS applications, make sure the Facebook SDK is updated to version 8.0 or above. And if you work with a Mobile Measurement Partner, be sure to confirm you’re using the version of their SDK that supports Apple’s SKAdNetwork API.

Plan to create iOS 14 app install campaigns with one ad account per app, nine campaigns per app and five ad sets per campaign of the same optimization type. Set up your conversion schema in Events Manager to optimize for App Events, Value and Mobile App Installs with Automated App Ads. [2]

Step 3: Verify Your Domain in Facebook Ads Manager 

Facebook is requesting all businesses verify their domains in an effort to prevent the misuse of ad accounts. In the verification process, your webmaster will be given a code to put on your domain. Facebook has recently said that verifying your domain will ensure that data still being collected by your pixels is accurately delivered to Facebook.

To verify your domain, log into your Facebook Business Manager account, scroll down to ‘Brand Safety’, and select ‘Domains’. You want to verify your domain (your website URL). You can also find a prompt to verify your domain with Ads manager, by visiting the Resource Center.

Step 4: Install and Enable the Conversions API

The primary solution Facebook is endorsing in an attempt to combat the Pixel-less future that almost seems inevitable, is a tool they developed called the Conversions API, or CAPI.

What the API does is share key web and offline events, or customer actions, directly from the business’ website server to Facebook. The API is installed on the server where the website lives, and works in tandem with the Facebook Pixel to help improve the performance and measurement of your ad campaigns.

In a way, the API attempts to pick up all the interactions now being missed by the Pixel, while both continue to send information back to Facebook to deliver a performance snapshot as accurate as possible

For more information, visit their Help Center page here (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2041148702652965?id=818859032317965).

Step 5: Set up and prioritize up to eight web events per domain in Aggregated Events Manager.

At first you’ll find 8 pre-assigned events by Facebook, with the events chosen being the ones they believe, “matter most to your business based on recent campaign spend from all of the ad accounts advertising to that domain.” [8] There are stops you can follow by following the link here (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/422408905612648). However, Facebook notes that their  enforcement of Aggregated Event Measurement requirements will only take effect once Apple begins enforcing its iOS update policies. At which point, modification to events will automatically pause ad sets that are impacted by the event changes for 72 hours. [8]

When selecting your events, Facebook suggests that you choose interactions that will send the data that is most valuable to your business objectives you’re trying to accomplish. Facebook states:

We recommend that you identify the 8 conversion events most important to critical business outcomes and assess if changes need to be made to your campaign or measurement strategy. You may need to consider if you’ll be required to optimize for upper funnel objectives like landing page views and link clicks. When you create your ad set you’ll choose only one of the 8 designated conversion events to optimize for. [8]

Keep in mind that these are the only events you will be able to use for campaign optimization and retargeting, so choose wisely. Event ‘slots’ are also to be mindful of. According to Facebook, most Events only take up one slot, with the exception of Purchases using Value Optimization, which take up four slots.

Step 6: Segment Audience Targeting by Android and iOS Users

This is more of an optional tactic, but one of the first actions you can take as an advertiser to begin building campaign ad sets that target Android devices only. For now, only consumers using Apple devices will become more difficult to track using Pixel data.

Android users should remain unaffected for the foreseeable future. Because the data being generated from iOS devices will be incomplete, segmenting your audiences by device makes sense from an analysis standpoint. You can still report on the complete picture for Android devices, and the partial picture for Apple devices.

Step 7: Consider Using an Attribution Modelling Platform

To supplement data and insights you receive from Facebook Ads Manager, one thing you may want to consider doing is setting up your various ad accounts and channels with an attribution modelling and analytics platform.

A good example of this is the ‘Wicked’ Attribution tool (wickedreports.com), which tracks multi-channel clicks and reports them against identified leads and sales on an ongoing basis, continually and dynamically updating to display real-time results whenever you need them. The ‘Wicked’ platform can determine when a campaign generates new leads or has converted an existing lead, automatically constructing a customer journey based on clicks, CRM events, and Sales conversions data it accumulates from dozens of sources.

More specifically, the ‘Wicked’ Attribution tool collects first-party CRM and sales conversion data, in addition to the channel, platform and campaign data collected in other measurement tools, and applies a variety attribution models to show you the true value of your ad campaigns and detect important conversion data points automatically. ‘Wicked’ attributes all revenue back to the campaigns that generate leads, so you can identify which channels are ROI positive over time. The integration of dozens of channels will give your business ‘big picture’ visibility of all your marketing efforts, identifying the tactics that are best at targeting high value customers.

Another great platform to consider is TrialFire (trialfire.com), another analytics platform that functions to amalgamate data from all your marketing channels into one place for the purpose of drawing insight. Trialfire is unique to Wicked Reports in that it is more focused on the individual, tracking each individual across their unique path-to-purchase. These paths are continuously analyzed to determine which touch-points increase conversions, and then each touchpoint is then given a value based on their marginal contribution to conversions. Trialfire employs an advanced ‘game-theory’ attribution model when evaluating paths and touchpoints, meant to account for user unpredictability. You can learn more by visiting their website.

Conclusion

The iOS 14.5 update presents a fairly daunting challenge to both marketers and businesses alike, but not one that is impossible to overcome.

Our ability to target users, generate leads and purchases, and measure conversions from Facebook ads will undoubtedly be affected, but the steps outlined in this article can help to mitigate some of this loss. And with the introduction of new tools like Facebook’s Conversion API, and others that are sure to come, we have a means of collecting data that would otherwise be missed by website Pixels.

The true impact of the iOS update is still largely unknown. Apple has a history of high adoption rates once a new OS rolls out, so we’ll probably find out sooner rather than later just how big an impact this will have.

This isn’t the first time the marketing industry has had to quickly adapt to a major change, and it likely won’t be the last.

Sources

1. Apple Developer Documentation. (2021). Retrieved 29 April 2021, from https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apptrackingtransparency
2. Apple’s iOS 14 Changes Are Almost Here: How to Finish Preparing and What’s Changing. (2021). Retrieved 21 April 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/business/news/how-to-prepare-for-changes-to-facebook-ads-from-ios-14-update
3. Apple Developer Documentation. (2021). Retrieved 29 April 2021, from https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwork
4. About Aggregated Event Measurement | Facebook Business Help Centre. (2021). Retrieved 29 April 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/business/help/721422165168355
5. How Apple’s iOS 14 release may affect your ads and reporting | Facebook Business Help Centre. (2021). Retrieved 21 April 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/business/help/331612538028890?id=428636648170202
6. Actions to take for ads ecosystem changes. (2021). Retrieved 29 April 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/ads-changes/guide
7. About Conversions API | Facebook Business Help Centre. (2021). Retrieved 30 April 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2041148702652965?id=818859032317965
8. Configure events to use aggregated event measurement | Facebook Business Help Centre. (2021). Retrieved 30 April 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/business/help/422408905612648
9. Wicked Reports, L. (2021). Wicked Reports. Retrieved 4 May 2021, from https://www.wickedreports.com/
10. Marketing Attribution Platform. (2021). Retrieved 4 May 2021, from https://trialfire.com/

Here’s the problem: the majority of buyer personas are ineffective at best. In some cases, businesses and marketing agencies become so focused on these ineffective personas that it actually weakens their campaigns—and their results.

To prevent this from happening, we’re going to take a look at how to know when your personas need an overhaul and tests that can determine their effectiveness.

How Do You Know if your Buyer Personas Need an Overhaul?

Having weak, ineffective, or inaccurate buyer personas is a common mistake we see people making on their Mobile Ads. These personas are used over and over and over again because most businesses don’t know when or how to test them.

If you haven’t questioned your buyer personas in a while, it’s automatically time for re-evaluation. If they’re working well and helping you get results, testing them every six months is often effective.

There are a few fatal flaws, however, that can damage your persona from the get-go. You want to immediately re-evaluate your buyer personas if:

• They’re aspirational. Some buyer personas will be aspirational. They might reflect the audience we want instead of the one we have; it’s not uncommon to wish that our audiences had bigger budgets than they actually do, for example. The personas themselves could also be accurate, but are used with the wrong targeting and content.
• They focus on the buyer and not the buying decision. While we do always want to understand our audience and who they are, buyer personas need to consider how our audience interacts with our product. If we forget to pay attention to how our customer’s make their buying decision, we’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
• They’re not targetable. You should be able to match your personas to targeting criteria on Facebook Or Instagram. That can mean a clearly defined custom audience, or using advanced targeting features like job title, level of education, relationship status, or interests. If you are lost about how to target ads based on a buyer persona, it’s not only not a good persona, it’s a useless one.
• They’re too similar. If you get your buyer personas confused because they all sound so similar, they’re too similar. Personas should help you separate and target diverse and unique niches in your audience, so they should be diverse, too.
• They’re untested. A lot of businesses will come up with their buyer personas and stick to them; many never really know how to test them, or that they can be tested. This means that their personas are untested hypotheses, and they have no idea if they’re effective or not.

If any of these criteria matches your buyer personas (or if you haven’t taken a closer look at them in 6 months), it’s time to test your buyer personas.

How to Test & Improve Your Buyer Personas

Testing personas can be tricky; it’s easy to split test Social Ads and determine effectiveness with metrics like CTR and CPA, but personas can be more difficult to clearly evaluate. These four tests are the best way to tell if your buyer personas need an overhaul.

1. Personas Testing
Instead of writing out a list of personas and sticking to them, you should test your hypothetical personas to see if they hold water. To do this, create content and copy (including Mobile Ads) geared towards these personas and target accordingly. When you use Mobile Ads, you can use their extremely detailed targeting system to give your personas a test run in the exact audience you’d conceived them for. If the personas don’t work, replace them. For those that do work, keep running tests to see where there is room for improvement.

There are some metrics that you should watch for, including:

• Reach
• Clicks
• Conversions
• Relevance score (this will be an important metric that lets you know how relevant your content is to the audience seeing it)
• Comments

Overtime, you may notice trends in your ads that could indicate the need for new personas. In other cases, your personas may lose effectiveness overtime. If this is the case, dive into the data and try to figure out why. If you stay open-minded and allow your personas to evolve as your customer base does, you’ll have much better results in the long run.

2. Do They Make Content Generation Easier or Harder?
Personas should make content and copy generation significantly easier. If you sit down and stare at your personas while trying to think of a headline for an ad at a blog post and nothing comes to mind after ten minutes, your persona probably hasn’t helped you much. The same is true if you’re only able to come up with generic, vague headlines; personas are all about specificity.

A wedding planning site, for example, could have a generic blog post title like “8 Wedding Dress Styles To Try On.” They could also have a blog post titled “6 Ways to Find the Dress of Your Dreams on a Budget” for one persona, and “The 6 Most Beautiful Destination Wedding Venues in the World” for another. One persona wants tips to plan a wedding they can afford; the other wants the most luxurious wedding money can be. While one site might not have both of these audiences that are so drastically different, it’s more than possible that they do, and audience segmentation and accurate personas are key to maintaining that.

You should be able to map your personas against your buyer funnel stages. This allows you to understand how you can meet their needs at every point of the digital sales funnel. You can then determine a content strategy for each persona at each funnel stage to make your content more effective overall.

The better your persona is, the easier content generation will be—whether for you, or for the agency or freelancer you’ve hired to do so. Ultimately, you should be able to personalize content for these personas—and these customers; doing so requires that you understand the customers’ needs better than your competitors do. To do that, you need to fully understand your customer; you want them to see their blog post and need to click on it because it satisfies their needs.

3. M+M – Focus on Mindset and Motivation
Are your personas focused on customer motivation and mindset? They should be.

Understanding the mood and emotional state that your customers are in when coming to you. Are they frustrated? Excited? Scared? Heartbroken? Angry? Are your customers excited to plan their wedding, or scared they can’t afford it? Are they frustrated with their current self-hosted WordPress site that has too many glitches? Scared that they can’t afford to fix their air conditioning unit, or angry that it went out in the middle of summer in Florida, or both? No matter what industry your business fits into, your customers have needs your business meets—and they definitely feel some emotions about it.

When you’re able to understand a persona to the point where you know both what their motivation is and their level of urgency in that motivation, you can create content that better shows how you can solve their problems.

Make sure you dive deep into the expected behaviors of people; people are complex, and our behaviors can be predictable. No one can be put neatly into a box—no matter how accurate or detailed that box is.

I have a friend, for example, who is extremely thrifty in almost area of her life, but she has one exception: she’ll splurge and spend almost anything on Internet of Things gadgets. She wouldn’t fit into the typical persona we might otherwise use for her, where the customer is looking for good value but cost is the most essential factor. Instead, she buys gadgets the way other people shop for clothes or eat out; it’s her luxury item. Focusing on the features and benefits and how unique the gadgets are would be a stronger selling point for her than saying “best price on the market.”

4. Intuition
While we’ve built Abacus on data-driven results, we also know that sometimes our intuition knows best. When you’re looking at your buyer personas, do they feel “right?” In my experience, every time a company nails a persona, it has that solid feeling of inherently being right.

There isn’t a scientific test for this one, as much as that might drive all of us crazy, but this is still a test all buyer personas should undergo. When you take a close look at it, does it feel obvious that the persona’s value proposition will match the client’s specific needs? Or do they have an unfair advantage to attract that persona? A bank’s online banking services, for example, are more valuable in theory to someone who lives far away than they are to someone who works in the building next door. This intuitively makes sense, and could form a solid basis for the buying decisions that might shape or affect a persona.

A well-crafted persona, after all, should identify a group that finds an irresistible amount of value from your proposition and your solution to their problems. This means you must identify their problem and understand what they need to fix it; you need to understand what will drive them to pay for your solution. If you do this, you can discover an unfair advantage to reach them.

Final Thoughts

If you’re able to develop strong, well-researched buyer personas, you’ll have an unfair advantage in reaching your target audience. More than that, you’ll better understand niches within your audience, which allows you to deliver more relevant ads and content to them. This means that you’ll get more clicks, more sales—and more profit. If that’s not an incentive to invest into researched-and-tested buyer personas for your business, I don’t know what is.

Mobile Social Ads are where well-crafted buyer personas go to shine!  If you can match your buyer persona with a well targeted Mobile ad campaign, you can personalize your messaging and increase your ad performance.  

Want to implement your buyer personas on Mobile Ads? We can help! Ask us how here.

People have shorter attention spans now more than ever. According to Facebook, people consume mobile content in 1.7 seconds. As a result, advertisers need to compete with both personal content and other advertisers on the platform.

Many, are now turning to video as a way to differentiate their ads and make their ads more thumbstopping.

You may have noticed the recent surge in video ads with many brands feeling pressure to give their audience what they want. In fact, 75% of all mobile data will be video by 2020.

However, creating video content isn’t enough. Brands need to create strategies that make their video content most effective.


Here are our top tips for more creating the most effective video ads:

1. Create for mobile first
The size dimensions for mobile video are different than for desktop.
Creating for mobile means creating a vertical video that is fully-immersive.

Nowadays, creating for mobile first doesn’t mean ignoring desktop but just realizing that people spend more time on mobile so, frame your content for that then repurpose that content for desktop.

Here is an example of McDonald’s creating a mobile video ad:

2. Use subtitles or video with no sound

Not everyone is listening to your ad with their volume ON.
People scroll through feeds when they’re on the transit, at work, in school or other places where they can’t have their volume on or headphones in.

So, to beat this advertisers need to offer subtitled videos, or even tell compelling stories without sound.

If your video needs sound to be compelling then it’s not going to be as effective or have enough of a reach.

Creating video content that can be viewed and is engaging without sound is how brands can ensure their video ads have the furthest reach.

Check out this thumb-stopping ad by Air Transat that has no sound but still tells a dynamic brand story:


3. Gets to the point

The traditional storytelling arc doesn’t work for the current video landscape. Brands no longer have enough time to build a story up to a conclusion.

Traditional story arc versus New video story arc:
Source: https://medium.com/comms-planning/not-another-ad-unit-a55f5261c0b6

They need to tell dynamic stories that are interesting from beginning to end, so that they can keep their audience engaged.

This doesn’t mean that your content has to be short, however, it does need to capture your audience’s attention quickly and keep it.

The company Hopper does a good job of aligning their video with their brand, keeping similar colours and dropping logo card right at the end.

4. Ensure it’s branded

Make sure your video content is branded and reflects your distinct brand identity.

Even, though it’s not static image format, ensure your logo is incorporated into the video somehow.

Whether it’s watermarked in the corner or is animated into the video, it’s important that the overall feel of the video is recognizable as being a part of your brand.

Check out how Skillshare has their logo watermarked in the corner of the video:

A professional motion graphics animator will know how to get your brand’s identity across in the video through different tactics.

5. Include lightweight animations

Lightweight motion graphics are ones that are minimal and use basic motion to make the story dynamic.

Following different editing techniques as advised by the big blue themselves Facebook, including:

1. Retrograde (rewind technique)
2. Pulse (Like wavelength keeps flashing)
3. Burst (starts linear then climax)
4. Shuffle (switches)
5. Bubble (small and then expands)
6. Boomerang (goes backward then forward)

Final thoughts
Facebook video ads should be an important part of your ad content strategy. Follow the best practices and tips above to get the furthest reach and best results from your video ads.

Create more effective video ads with Facebook and Abacus today!

What are the keys to success behind the first movers in this industry?

Regardless of how fast everyone wants to grasp this opportunity and run with it, it still warrants caution. Advertising cannot be successful if the ads don’t run live. So agencies need to get creative within the rules. When Abacus set up shop, their focus was on social advertising. On day three they had attracted the interest of Tokyo Smoke. This springboarded them into the cannabis market. Over the last two years, they have been working with a number of major Licensed Producers (LPs) and global cannabis companies. 

Abacus’ success lies in a mix of great content, a tech stack and data.
Abacus found a unique and creative way to work the landscape. By creating a lot of good quality content to tell stories and educate the consumer, they then explored various distribution channels to amplify that content. They’ve built up a tech stack to allocate spend in a compliant way – both digitally and Out of Home (OOH). Part of that tech stack includes StackAdapt to meet the programmatic digital advertising requirements for their clients. Amongst the numerous vertical brand campaigns executed in StackAdapt, cannabis has been notable. In just a year, StackAdapt has been trusted by 43 LPs, cannabis stocks and brands, seeing 6.1x year over year growth in media spend. 

“Cannabis campaigns perform very well on our platform, because cannabis advertising is driven primarily through content which is a natural fit with native advertising,” says Vitaly Pecherskiy, co-founder and COO at StackAdapt. “Beyond being a technology provider, we partner closely with our clients to ensure that they achieve business results and success with the challenges specific to the cannabis industry. We focused on developing in-house subject matter expertise that clients have come to trust to help them carve a path in an increasingly competitive market.”

That in-house subject matter expertise starts with the Platform Quality team and extends to the innovative approach to client ad creatives by the StackAdapt Creative Studio. Private Marketplace Deals (PMPs) can be curated specifically for this industry and its audience allowing access to higher-tier inventory, inventory not available on the open exchange and greater control over the placement and performance of ads. To further assist marketers in this industry, StackAdapt released The Marketing Master Guide to Cannabis Advertising, containing some best practices, as well as helpful strategies and tips for running successful cannabis campaigns.

As StackAdapt is experiencing growth in the number of cannabis-related campaigns being executed, Abacus continues to attract LPs and cannabis brands wanting to capitalize on the opportunity of this market. They have 15 campaigns (and growing) in the US and Canada ready to go – most of them on StackAdapt.

“When we started working with cannabis brands back in 2016, which was pre-legalization in Canada, we essentially had to re-write the marketing playbook,” states Peter Reitano, CEO, Abacus. “Very few of the tactics we use for our usual clients would work, given the tight regulations. It’s forced us to be very creative and build out a specialized division in the company that solely focuses on the Canadian and emerging global cannabis industry. We work with our clients to develop beautiful brands, unique content, and compliant go-to-market campaigns that help them differentiate and win customers in an increasingly competitive space.”

Thinking-outside-the-box but staying within-the-rules?
This Blissed Case Study from Abacus illustrates their creative approach to promoting a cannabis product, while avoiding the stereotypical associations in their advertising.

This is only the start of a beautiful relationship between content and distribution. StackAdapt and Abacus aligned to focus on growing cannabis brands into thriving brands. Together, they can navigate this media landscape with exceptional innovation and creativity, while remaining mindful of ever-changing regulatory guidelines and conditions. 



About StackAdapt
StackAdapt is a self-serve programmatic advertising platform used by North America’s most exceptional digital marketers. This state-of-the-art platform is where some of the most progressive work in machine learning meets cutting-edge user experience. Ad buyers plan, execute, and manage data-driven digital advertising campaigns across all devices, leveraging proprietary data, inventory and publisher partners.

About Abacus
Abacus is a digital performance agency with a driving force that helps companies achieve their growth objectives, specifically through mobile campaigns. Their data-driven approach applied to award-winning design talent creates scalable programs for clients, whether they’re a Fortune 500 brand or an SMB. Abacus was started by agency veteran Peter Reitano and client-side veteran Jeff Goldenberg, and the advisory board includes Round13 Capital founder and former Dragon Bruce Croxon.

They all point their fingers at one specific reason: short form, performance advertising.

They believe that short-form content and digital media buying have created an industry of tight turn arounds, smaller budgets, and a focus on ROI and the “numbers.” *shudders in fear*

And they’re right.

They think these shifts have led to lack of brand voice, movement towards low brow performance creative, a focus on quantity over quality, and gone are the days of compelling brand story telling.

That’s where they are wrong.

TV had the unbelievable luxury of forcing its audience to watch ads. The ads that were great in the heyday of TV changed culture as we knew it. They moved people. They made people care about the biggest brands in the world. They had compelling stories and high production quality. The good ones even felt like short movies.

But nothing stays the same.

The internet rose to be the primary source of entertainment, information, and communication. It taught us advertisers the most important, gut-punching lesson that would make us rethink everything.

Given the option, most people would rather skip even the greatest TV ad. No one likes ads.

Especially when it interrupts their frantic, short attention fueled digital content. We have all of the music, TV shows, and movies ever made at our fingertips. No one is going to let an ad get in their way. As the internet and social media surpassed TV, we saw a massive shift in media buying was happening. Data analytics and audience targeting was getting sophisticated enough to track niche interests,put together unique audiences to serve up different messaging based on a person’s point in a consumer journey.

Enter the wave of performance advertising.

Using click bait creative and advanced targeting to hack the “numbers” *shudders* for ROI. Forgoing brand voice and strategy completely. Building more clicks and purchases with no long term brand voice. Utilizing targeting so sophisticated, people think their phones are listening to them.

Even I can admit, we swung the pendulum too far. But we did learn another lesson.

No one likes ads but everyone likes content that speaks to their likes, aesthetics, and interests. Creative requires different messaging for different audiences. There is no one-size-fits-all anymore. Whereas once you needed to plan 1-2 TV commercials a year; Now you have to think about MONTHS of creative. Multiple pieces that speak to a variety of audiences at different stages in the consumer journey.

There’s still a story. It just may not be the story you’re used to. (And yes, you need to care about performance-based targeting to accompany your brand creative. They need to speak to each other.) I’ve only been in this industry for a short time and it irks me that the OG creatives I admire most believe the changes that bring new advertising to life are its “death”.  What they fail to realize is the internet and social media offer the biggest opportunity for how brands communicate. We can tailor our messages, speak more directly to people’s interests, and tell even more stories. Best of all, we can create stronger, long-lasting relationships with consumers. 

And isn’t that what this industry is all about?

Corey Way is a Cannes Lion-winning designer, and creative director of Toronto based agency Abacus.

____

This article originally appeared in ‘The Message’, April 29th, 2020, in an edited form. 

What are the key steps to building a design system for social media?

Step 1: Conducting a visual audit

The first step in building any design system for social media is to do a visual audit of your current look and feel, whether that’s the design of your website, your social feed, and app, or some other digital download. Take note of the platforms that are successfully being used (Instagram, WordPress, Shopify etc) and the visual elements can help you gauge how much of an undertaking this process might be. Make note of what you like and what you dislike about your current look, and what content has been well received by your audience.

While tempting to be “everywhere” on social media, It is always better to succeed at one platform than to struggle on several fronts. If you’re not using twitter or your blog, it may be better to discontinue those channels and put your focus where it gives the best return on your effort. Similarly, if you hate the way your storefront looks on a platform, a visual refresh might be the tipping point needed to upgrade or migrate to something more your liking.

If you’re not ready for this step yet, or you have yet to launch your brand, read more on how to find your perfect audience before diving into creating a design system for social media for your brand. You’ll need to know WHO you’re talking to before you start anything!

Step 2: Create a visual design language

The visual language is the core of a design system for social media. It’s made up of the components that you’ll use to construct your content or products.

Any visual design language is made up of four basic categories, and you should consider the role each of these design elements plays in every component of your products.

Photo by Mario Gogh on Unsplash

Colour
Obvious, right? Common colours in a design system include 1–3 primaries that represent your brand. You may want to include a range of tints (colours mixed with white—or shades—a colours mixed with black or white at 50% opacity —to give your designs a few more options. Tools like Coolors or Adobe Color are both free and a great way to start playing with palettes and complimentary colours hands on.

Typography
Most design systems include just 2 fonts: 1 font for both headings and visual element titles (things like pop-ups or widgets on a website), and a monospace font for body content. For a successful design system for social media, Keep it simple. To avoid confusing your user, keep the number of fonts low and keep them simple, it’s not only a best practice of typographic design, it also prevents issues caused by web fonts not displaying for all users in all environments. An essential starting point to selecting type is to find a library, like Google Fonts or Adobe’s TypeKit.

Sizing and spacing
The system you use for spacing and sizing looks best when you have balance. To speed up this process, it helps to think of your designs in three “densities” that serve unique purposes beyond just a design system for social media: remember, you’re visual identity must be maintained anywhere there’s a touch-point with your customer.

• Small: high-density text without images or icons, for frequently used interfaces on websites or content that integrates considerable text. Best suited for e-commerce websites, email and applications.
• Medium: a default for many platforms (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIN) and long-form reading experiences for any range of consumer, business, and internal content. This size usually blend text and images and allows for a combination of both a heading and short text content.
• Large: photo forward, content-rich marketing, promotions, and one-time data entry for new customers online and other single focused messages. This size will usually contain only a heading or icon and no body content.

In your designs, set your margins to be the same for all social platforms based on percentages or points, not pixels, to avoid problems across different screen sizes, or use columns, fractions (1/3rd, 1/2 etc) to maintain a consistent look regardless of boundaries. Before considering any of these sizes, it’s always recommended to bookmark Sprout’s excellent, and always up to day, Social Media Image Size Guide.

Imagery and Photography
The key to success with imagery and photography in your visual design language is having a plan and sticking to it. For any design system for social media, set guidelines for photos and illustrations, and use the best image format for the situation. Create a Pinterest or moodboard with both photos that you feel represent your visual language and a separate board for ones that do NOT.

Using free photo sites like Unsplash or Pexels can be a great starting point, but always be careful when it comes to using these photos in your final product.  It’s better to always pay for proper licensed stock photography, or, hire a photographer before going live with your new design system for social media.

Step 3: Create a icon and pattern library

Photo by Harpal Singh on Unsplash

Unlike the visual audit you’ve already conducted (which looked at the visual qualities of your design elements), this step in the process looks at usable components of your design system and how to streamline them.

Select, at most, 3 patterns that can be used to add depth to your design system. Choose a set of icons (no more than 12-15 total) to represent your brands products, your content topics or other categories. You can choose icons from a free library like Flaticon for inspiration, or, if the license allows, use them across your designs from day one.

Icons and patterns are extremely important for any design system for social media. When combined with your previous colours and imagery, you can create an almost endless amount of visual content for your brand while breaking out of using too much text.

Step 4: Document what each component is and when to use it

This step is super important.

In fact, it’s the most important step to creating a design system for social media.

Documentation and standards are what separate a pattern library from a true design system. First and foremost, a design system is NOT a set of templates.

A design system combines all the visual elements of your brand or business to be a “single source of truth”, It doesn’t matter how you choose to lay it out. It can be a simple document or pdf, a Notion page, or something specialized, like InVision Design System Manager. What matters is that your design system for social media is followed for each and every post, advertisement or product you create.

Before beginning work on your design system, take a moment to think about the people you’ll need to bring it to life. Can you design it yourself? Who needs to be involved? You’re going to need more than just graphic designers: a design system needs to consider things like platform suitability, audience targeting, website design, ad buying and much more.

And remember, if you need still need help creating a design system for social media, we’re only an email away.

Header Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash

Startup Marketing 101: Referral programs

A classic for startup marketing is the referral. From the early days of Gmail invites, to Uber codes to the proliferation of meal-kits online, one thing is clear: referrals work.

Sometimes the best way to market to new customers is to avoid advertising altogether; instead, create a system that lets your customers do the marketing for you. It’s proven that people are four times more likely to buy a product when it’s referred to them by a friend, so why fix what’s not broken?

Despite endless digital ads and endorsements from influencers, we still trust personal recommendations more than anything else. Establishing a referral program doesn’t cost much, and depending on how you structure it, might be entirely free.

Most E-commerce solutions will have this function built it, but it’s up to you to use it effectively.

Look at your potential audience and ask: what would THEY want? Would you offer your current customers a discount on their subscriptions in exchange for referring a new customer, extra features, or even a cash reward?

Remember: referrals are only as good as the value they bring to your customers, not just to you.

Email marketing

While not exactly glamorous, Email marketing is undeniably the most cost-efficient marketing startup marketing strategy around, with some sources claiming a return on investment (ROI) of 400 percent or more.

Don’t worry about size: as long as you have a good list (personally curated, rather than bought), and a steady stream of outgoing email blasts that give your customers value, you should be able to see a significant return on any time or money you put into it regardless of if you have 1000 or 100,000 users.

Tools like Mailchimp and Hive can also connect to your e-commerce and advertising platforms, helping streamline automation, audience tracking and analysis and much more, while offering robust and reliable email delivery at low prices.

Press releases and news features

Let the local media work for you. Sending emails, tweeting at journalists you engage with, or sending press releases can be an inexpensive way to get your brand mentioned in major publications, and possibly pick up some inbound links along the way.

If you do the work yourself, hunting down and emailing journalists, press releases can be very effective as a startup marketing plank. However, make sure you are finding the right publications to build relationships with their audience and offer value…not just trying to secure free advertising.

Content marketing 

Content marketing takes many forms and most require an investment of nothing but time. Many startup marketing strategies put content marketing front and center.

The easiest starting point for a startup marketing strategy is to manage an on-site blog, adding new content a few times a week that informs or entertains your readers in some unique and practical way, is searchable and easy to digest. But don’t stop there!

Go live on Instagram or LinkedIn and answer questions, demonstrate products or ask questions to your audience on a weekly basis. Create recipe videos or outfit styles based on your products. Write a cookbook using your plates or glassware… the opportunities are endless! You can use an online tool to easily edit your videos, like Veed.io, and save time and labour by using automated captions, transitions and more to keep content flowing.

Once you start your Content marketing, remember: to be an effective startup marketing strategy the key is consistency. If you can only post once a week, do it!

But be consistent: set a schedule, and stick to it. Once your audience becomes accustomed to your weekly updates, they’ll be that much more likely to become customers when they’re ready.

SEO

If you’re spending time writing blog posts for your content-marketing campaign, you might as well invest in improving your search engine optimization (SEO).

New to SEO? It might seem like arcane computer magic, but with a bit of research you can easily understand the basics and implement better SEO as part of your startup marketing strategy.

It’s actually deceptively simple: Online tools like Moz’s Keyword Explorer or Ubersuggest will help you identify relevant keywords that attract traffic to your site with low competition, then update your site to include those keywords.

Tools like Ubersuggest or Rankmath will help find any structural changes, high or low quality content and potential backlinks to your domain. By making incremental changes and improving your site and content, you’ll begin to see progress, and traffic that continues to grow consistently.

This strategy is very time consuming, but the results can be outstanding and well worth the effort!

Social media 

Social media is an essential part of any startup marketing plan. Start by establishing profiles for your business on major platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Flesh out your profiles; and start sharing content that your audience will enjoy.

Much like other content marketing, Social media marketing requires you to be consistent: answer questions promptly, post regularly and don’t just push people to buy buy buy… customers will engage with accounts that provide both value and entertainment, so let your personality show through.

Community Building

Have a niche product? One incredibly effective startup marketing strategy is using social media or online forums like Reddit or Quora to engage your audience!

Reach out to individuals, participate in threads and make sure to stay connected and reply to questions or offer deals or discounts to interested consumers. Using this startup marketing strategy can help show your expertise in your industry, offer unbiased opinions to help build reputation, and learn more about your audience first hand.

In time, you could grow an audience of thousands with very little money, representing an ever growing avenue for exposure if you stay with it!

Personal branding

When it comes to startup marketing: Personal branding is essential. To help grow awareness and reputation, you’ll need to promote yourself and your expertise across social media, LinkedIn or a dedicated blog, earning new followers and a separate source of traffic and interest.

Remember this is not your BRAND: this is YOU!

While startup marketing is obviously important to you business, modern marketers have learned that the people behind the brand are just as attractive to consumers… so let them get to know you!

The value here is that people tend to trust other people more than corporations, so eventually, you’ll have a separate, powerful outlet you can use to syndicate your content or attract new leads — without paying a penny.

Heading Photo by Shannon Rowies on Unsplash

With Reels, Users can Record and edit 30-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and use new creative tools designed to steal some thunder from the meme-ready tools provided by ByteDance’s TikTok or Snap Inc’s Snapchat.

Reels in Explore are a new feature designed to offer anyone the chance to become a creator on Instagram and reach new audiences on a global stage, and offer brands another high-visibility channel to reach audiences through Instagram Reels ads.

Reels ads will be full screen and vertical, similar to ads in Stories, and will appear in between individual Reels. As with regular Reels content, these ads will loop and can be up to 30 seconds. People can comment, like, view, save and share Reels ads.

Reels ads will appear in the most popular places to access Reels content. This includes the Reels tab, Reels in Stories, Reels in Explore and Reels in your feed. Once a user taps into a reel from Stories, Feed, the Reels Tab or Explore, they will enter a viewer that exclusively shows reels that scroll vertically.

Want to talk about bring your brand to Instagram REELS? Drop us a line.