What is native advertising? Will it help your business? How do you do it?
Native advertising is a new term, but there is some argument as to whether it is a new form of advertising. The simplest way to describe it is advertising which “blends” into the medium where it appears, and advertisers and marketers have been doing this for years, from newspaper ads disguised as a column to radio ads that try to sneak their commercial in by making it a song that fits the station’s format. Social Media got a hold of this tried and true trick of marketing, and as they tend to do, made up a new name for it, native advertising—but as is always the case with social media, this type of ad has the added benefit (or responsibility) of encouraging interaction through shares, likes, comments, and more. So native advertising is this other type of advertising that has always been around, but for social media.
If your business has social sites it may have occurred to you at some point that it is a bit harder to get people to care about your brand during their social media time than you first imagined. Who knew? Your customers are not actually all of that interested in singing the praises of brands and products like a paid spokesperson. They must be bribed, cajoled, asked nicely to talk about you in most cases at least.
But what if you were to give them something they actually wanted, something that fits into the whole social media scene perfectly, what if you were to provide that thing for them and then just sort of give yourself a cameo at the end, a little something at the beginning maybe letting them know who you are?
Like making an ad in your ad.
It’s sort of like that, and here is a really successful example of a native ad by Mini:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/miniusanotnormal/25-places-that-look-not-normal-but-are-actually-r-7lct
34,000 Shares
111,000 Likes
7,000 Tweets
You may want to look at the other campaigns by Mini in the sidebar too. A couple of them are pretty interesting. They tie the slogan, “Not Normal,” into various things people who are on social media would be interested in, and it has worked really well for them.
Like all advertising, being relevant is vitally important. Other important elements include impact, fitting into the medium, wide interest, and as you’ll see if you follow the comments on the link, give credit where due and try to let them follow up on the info they are interested in. We are going to tell you why each of those elements are important in a bit.
For many businesses, most perhaps, those checkmarks are in the ideal places, and some of the red checkmarks are impossible to achieve for many businesses (like Mini) anyway so you might as well get all of that brand awareness. Making sure your business can benefit from this type of ad is the first step because not every business will.
Relevant – Why do they need to be relevant on some level? Can’t you just compile some interesting stuff and cool pictures and then put your name at the end? Here’s the problem with that route, even if you make an incredibly successful native advertisement as in a lot of people clicked, shared, liked etc. how do they remember who did it? What about the ad is going to make people think of your business or brand? If there is no connection than they will not remember your brand no matter how great the ad was. All you managed to do was make a particularly popular thing that won’t lead to sales at any time in the future no matter how much people love it. You have to be relevant in advertising. If there is not a connection you are wasting time and money no matter how great the ad is.
Impact – This should go without saying, but it has to be something interesting, or insightful, or fun, or funny, or inspirational—something they will want to share just because it is cool. Which means it cannot be about your product or service in nearly every case (we know, you think your product or service is interesting, problem is that people on social media don’t, at least not while they are talking to friends and family)… which makes the relevant part more difficult right?
Fit into the medium – What do people share and like on social media? The answer is not products and services. The answer is things that make them smile, laugh, cry, love, hate, and feel.
Wide interest – Mini didn’t ask (well maybe they did but they didn’t have to) “What would our customer be interested in?” Because all they really had to figure out is, “What are people interested in?” It’s usually a lot easier to figure out what people in general are interested in than trying to figure out what specific demographics are interested in.
Credit sources – It’s not just a legal issue. People are going to know this is an ad, and you honestly don’t want to hide it, so if you have something that should be credited to someone else you need to credit it otherwise, as you can see in the comments if you followed the example, its starts to look like a business stealing ideas and the populace is extremely sensitive to that sort of thing.
Offer ways to satisfy their interest – Mini does not do this here. You don’t really get to see a back story and that is to their detriment (Despite its popularity. A really good ad can afford a mistake or two usually). So if you were to have “Not Normal” landscapes (but don’t do that because it’s been done) it will be shared more often if that compiled list also leads to places where they can satisfy their further interest from one convenient source (your ad) instead of leaving you and going elsewhere to satisfy that interest.
All of that is pretty easy to follow, once you have an idea to share. Coming up with something that will catch on is the hardest part.