Omnichannel advertising is not news anymore.
You probably know by now that advertising through multiple channels gets a better ROI. But where it gets tricky is deciding which channels to spend your advertising budget on.
Almost all paid advertising channels are touted to generate results. Channels like Instagram Ads, Facebook Ads, AdWords, etc. are all super effective.
At least, that’s the word on the street or in the advertising departments of several companies.
And it’s true.
But nonetheless, trends change rapidly in advertising.
Channels that worked last year may have evolved; you need to stay up-to-date to know when they do, so you don’t end up wasting your advertising budget.
So in light of this, here’s an updated list of five paid advertising channels you should use in 2019.
Pro tip: To track the percentage of quality traffic from your advertising channels, use Finteza.
1. Pinterest influencer marketing
Many advertisers have their eyes on Instagram for influencer marketing, and for good reason – Instagram influencers are driving ROI for several brands.
But Pinterest is another powerful advertising channel to consider.
The platform has influencers that reach millions of consumers every day. One of the most popular Pinterest influencers, Paula Coop McCrory, has over 4M followers.
Her profile gets almost 750k viewers every month.
That number of viewers would easily amount to millions of impressions per month.
All these numbers are to drive home a point: Pinterest influencer marketing is a powerful advertising channel.
And Pinterest has made it easier to track your influencer marketing ROI on the platform; they introduced an API last year.
But frankly, you shouldn’t rely only on the analytics platform Pinterest provides. You need a platform that’s totally transparent and has no chance of being biased – your own analytics platform besides Pinterest’s own.
A few months ago, Facebook got sued for inflating reach numbers. Whether that’s true or not, when running ads on platforms (Facebook, Pinterest, etc), you need an unbiased report of your campaigns.
Finteza is one tool that provides you with such reports. It shows you the rate of quality traffic coming from specific campaigns you run:
So while running your Pinterest influencer marketing campaigns, you don’t have to waste valuable time monitoring metrics like bounce rates and time on page of visitors from various referrals to determine traffic quality.
Finteza combines all these metrics and shows you the percentage of traffic quality from your Pinterest (and other channels) campaigns.
2. Advanced Shopping Campaign strategies
As millions of consumers usually start their shopping journeys from Google, product listing ads (aka Shopping campaigns) remain a powerful paid advertising channel in 2019.
Using either desktop or mobile, shoppers will search Google for anything from their dream cars to kitchenware.
You need an advanced Shopping campaign strategy to allow Google to promote your products to its wide-reaching network.
Senior retail search manager at CPC Strategy, Josh Brisco, says it like this:
Building a more sophisticated Shopping campaign strategy helps your products surface more in search results.
Also, building a sophisticated shopping campaign strategy means:
- You’ll keep improving and refreshing your product feed to ensure it tallies with Google’s specifications – as this determines how Google shows your products in search results.
- You watch out for keywords and titles your target consumers are searching for and use them in your product descriptions.
- You’re using high-res pictures and visuals.
- You’re smartly implementing bidding strategies for better revenue.
- You’re adding discounts to products listed on your Shopping campaigns.
In 2019, a more advanced shopping campaign strategy that implements these tips has greater chances of appearing in relevant product searches.
3. Attention-driven affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing follows the influencer marketing concept: A brand or influencer has your audience’s attention so you pay them to promote your product or service to that audience.
Except that in affiliate marketing, your partners receive a commission or cut; in influencer marketing, your influencer partners receive a lump sum.
However, while 80% of advertisers devote at least 10% of their marketing budgets to affiliate marketing, it’s more important to drive the right type of attention and traffic.
One of the most common downsides of affiliate marketing is how easily it attracts inferior traffic if you’re not doing it properly.
You need to work with affiliates who don’t just have high traffic numbers, but also a great relationship with your target customers.
In other words, you need affiliates who are attracting thousands or millions of your target customers’ attention and not just those attracting attention from everyone and anyone.
4. Event-related contests
When you launch contests, it’s usually a win-win for you and your customers.
They get the chance to win something of value and you get a lot more, usually.
But it becomes more effective when you organize the contest around events like Christmas, New Year, Valentine’s Day, and so on.
These events already put your customers in a festive mood, and if your contest helps foster that mood, they’re more likely to participate.
For example, clothing and home decor retailer Lands’ End, ran a contest during Christmas on their Twitter profile called #SantaForADay. They partnered with influencers – mostly parents – and asked their followers how the holidays impact their families and other family related questions.
Followers who answered the questions got a chance to win a gift from the retailer.
They created a lot of buzz with people even tagging their friends and family.
With that, Lands’ End got even more free publicity. It’s fun and people enjoy games – no wonder the gamification market is expected to grow to nearly 12 billion in 2021.
With contests, you’re able to tap into the playful side of your customers and get free publicity as they naturally tell more people about it.
5. A 2019 standard word-of-mouth marketing strategy
90% of shoppers believe brand recommendations from their friends.
This implies that if you haven’t been working hard on getting good reviews, ratings, and recommendations, now’s the time to get better at it.
In 2019, an effective word-of-mouth marketing strategy would include:
- A User Generated Content (UGC) tool that smartly collects reviews from customers.
- UGC promotion so more customers will see that your products solve problems.
- Offering users and customers incentives to leave reviews.
- A strategy to amplify UGC that comes from influencers and reputable figures.
That said, your word-of-mouth marketing strategy, regardless of how sophisticated it is, will suffer if consumers refuse to share reviews or their experience with your brand.
To encourage them to share their reviews, many brands use strategies like the following:
- Discounts.
- Freebies.
- Featuring them in a social media post.
- Creating a hashtag to share their experiences.
Once you’re able to find a word-of-mouth marketing strategy that generates reviews on autopilot, you’ll only have to keep monitoring the UGC you’re getting and know how and when to step in if needed.
In the end, religiously track your paid advertising channel results
Again, while all these paid advertising channels are super effective for running campaigns this year, they’re still not a one-size-fits-all key to get your desired revenue.
You need to ensure you’re properly tracking your advertising campaigns and measuring results accordingly.
Again, Finteza is a highly recommended tool. It helps you save time and quickly shows you all the information you need about the quality of traffic coming from your campaigns and the results they bring.’
Guest author: Victor Ijidola is a content marketer/writer for hire, driving leads and sales for B2B and SaaS businesses through content marketing. His work has also been featured on sites like Marketo, NeilPatel.com, and many others.