A few months ago, I saw an online advertisement for a local company whose website I had been on a day or two prior (I won’t say who or in what industry in the interest of privacy). “Oh, interesting,” I thought, “they’re running some retargeting advertisements to try to get me back on their site to convert. Smart move.”
Yesterday, I saw that same ad. This makes sense, as I’ve been seeing that same ad reliably once or twice a day since I visited their website several months ago. It’s everywhere. It’s on YouTube, it’s on my soccer highlights, and it’s next to news articles. I feel like I’m the next victim in a slasher movie. I’m doing everything I can to get away from it, but no matter what I do it’s always waiting for me around the next corner.
Perhaps you, the reader, are now wondering, “Yikes, how do I keep my company from being compared to a horror movie villain in the minds of my audience?”
Great news: Here’s three easy things you can do to keep that from happening.
Better Creative
It’s one of the easiest ways to avoid this problem. If you’re going to run an ad that a consumer is going to see 20 times, just have creative that the consumer enjoys seeing for the 20th time. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing the Geico commercial where a couple says their house has a rat problem and it turns out that the 80s hair band Ratt is performing their hit “Round and Round” on repeat in their house. It’s just a great commercial, and I welcome it every time I see it. You can greatly increase your audience’s threshold at which an advertisement loses its effectiveness – or worse, becomes actively detrimental to their perception of your brand – by simply making it an ad that they don’t mind seeing.
MORE creative
Another way you can skirt around the average consumer’s limited appetite for your company’s messaging is to deliver it in different ways. Using Geico again as an example, it would be hard to quantify how many times the average person sees their advertisements in a calendar year, purely based on the sheer number of times you’re exposed to their messaging. They keep audiences from showing up at their door with torches and pitchforks by rotating their creative every few weeks. This allows them to run what is essentially the same message, but within a new spot, which then registers in the consumer’s brain as something new.
One way you might be able to cheat this system is through dynamic creative. This takes the form of display banners or videos which change on their own. For example, the creative might display different products or images each time it is served to a consumer. Especially for businesses with a large catalogue, this can be useful as it gives the customer a chance to consider more of your products than a typical static banner.
Diversify
The easiest way to avoid bludgeoning your consumer with the same message served in the same way is simply to disperse your message across a wider range of channels. In my retargeting example, part of why I became annoyed with the frequency is because it was the same set of banners being served to me in the exact same way for months on end. If they had taken that money and spent some of it on social media advertising, maybe put some of it in pre-roll on YouTube or other video networks, then Google wouldn’t be pulling from that same bucket of money months later, desperately trying to get me to convert via the only channel they’ve allowed it to use. Some channels will always be more cost effective. Some drive more conversions than others. But ALL channels are necessary to form a well-rounded marketing plan that delivers on more than just your KPIs, it will deliver positive results for your business.
Does this sound like a better approach than you’re currently taking? Are you shuddering, wondering whether the business I mentioned at the top of this post might be yours? If so, reach out to Miller Ad Agency. For your sake and your audiences’.
