Top Takeaways from the 2021 IFA Ignite Conference

2021 is a big year for franchises to step up their digital advertising and win over valuable new customers. In 2020, online spending made up 21.3% of total retail sales in the United States. That’s the biggest annual U.S. eCommerce growth in over two decades. In addition, online has become the best way to connect with your customers.  

The digital advertising experience has changed so much in the past year. Here are the things your brand should be focusing on in 2021 and beyond to connect with customers, increase revenue, and make a lasting impression with your brand.

Start Planning a Connected TV Campaign

Connected TV advertising, or CTV, is taking the digital advertising world by storm. With so many people spending time on streaming devices, advertising on these spaces specifically is a smart business decision. A strong connected tv presence can increase brand awareness, drive more sales, lead to a new touchpoint or connection with your customer, and establish yourself as a strong player in your local market.

CTV refers to any television that can connect to the internet to stream video content. It’s a subset of over-the-top media (OTT), which includes apps and services that don’t require subscriptions to traditional cable or pay-TV service (think YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc.).  CTV includes Smart TVs and attached devices like Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google Cast and gaming consoles like Xboxes and PlayStations.

At Netsertive, we build your CTV content into a fully integrated and dynamic digital funnel. Our digital platform uniquely turns CTV into a conversion tool by localizing and customizing content. This improves search and product shopping ad performance by complementing full-funnel campaigns.

Make Time for Video

Video ads on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram can generate great results for your ad campaigns. Use Google’s YouTube Video Builder to easily create high-impact, YouTube ready ads.

Use creative tools or a partner to overlay location-specific contact information on top of a single brand video. That way, one video asset can be automatically customized to every franchisee, without hand creating videos for every franchisee.

Video is a powerful tool for converting prospects online. If you’re struggling to create video content that works for your franchise, bring in a third party vendor who can help localize video ads for each of your franchise’s locations. For example, as a marketing partner Netsertive is able to help our customers localize their video advertising and customize their campaigns per location.

Another great benefit of video advertising is the targeting capabilities. If you aren’t targeting the right kind of customers online, your advertising will never convert.

Understand your Customer Base

Audience targeting is one of the most important elements of your digital advertising campaign. In order to reach your customers, you have to know who they are, what they’re looking for, and how they’re spending their time online.

In order to do that, you need to understand their customer journey and persona.

At Netsertive, we help our customers with behavior targeting that’s based on how prospects are spending time online. Behavioral targeting includes collecting data online about your customers’ online browsing and shopping behaviors. Behavioral targeting makes your advertising campaigns more effective because it increases user engagement, leads to a higher number of ad click-throughs, and improves overall conversion rates of the campaign.

Make Sure You’re Showing Up Where it Counts

Your customers are online—are you showing up where they are? It’s not just about setting up an aggressive digital advertising campaign. You have to make sure your business shows up when people are searching for it on Google. After all, Google’s #1 mission in life is to help people answer their questions. Setting up a strong digital presence for your brand—including updating your Google My Business profile, making sure your website loads quickly, and investing in basic SEO and PPC services—yields greater results in your local community.

In fact, did you know that over 25% of people click the first Google search result they see. If someone in your neighborhood is searching for “roller skates near me,” and you’re a roller skating shop, will you show up when they search?

In addition, is your brand providing customers with a great online experience? Is your social media set up and running both paid and organic content? It’s more important than you might realize. In fact, according to a 2018 report, 73% of consumers said they have been influenced by a brand’s social media when making a decision.

Make an Impression

Another easy way to make sure your franchise is making an impression—and one that has nothing to do with your marketing—is to stand out in your community. Build relationships with your neighbors and customers. Do what you can to stand out—talking to the people you work with is the best place to start and it’s completely free.

Stay on Top of Platform Updates that Might Disrupt Your Ads

A lot changed in 2020 and is continuing to change in 2021. That includes updates to ad platforms like Google, Facebook, Microsoft Advertising, and more.

So far in 2021, two major updates have come to the surface that might change the way certain franchises advertise online. It’s too much to get into here, but here’s what you need to know:

• Thanks to an iOS Update, Facebook is now changing their attribution model.
• Google Ads recently sunset one of their keyword targeting behaviors. Say goodbye to Modified Broad Match, but don’t worry —Google is incorporating the most powerful elements of Modified Broad Match into Phrase Match.

The Netsertive blog is a great way to stay up to date on the latest technological upgrades and updates happening. Have any questions about how to better set up your keyword strategy? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us here for a free consultation.

Set an Appropriate Budget

Just like targeting, setting up your ad budget is crucial to delivering new leads and sales to your franchise. If your budget isn’t high enough, you’ll miss out on valuable prospective customers. With an ad budget that’s set too high, on the other hand, you risk losing money by overspending on ads that just aren’t converting.

If you’re wondering the best way to set up your ad budget, you’re probably not alone. We just put out an eBook, How to Calculate Your Ideal Digital Ad Spend, that covers everything you need to know about setting your ad budget online.

Be sure to review all of the metrics behind your ad campaigns. Work smarter to provide a budget that converts as many prospects as possible. Look into your campaign’s ROI, ROAS, and other important metrics that define how well your ads are performing.

If it’s performing poorly? Cut it and redesign. Is it performing really well? Keep pumping money into that specific advertising budget, but monitor it carefully to make sure it’s not overspending.

The Right Partner Makes All the Difference

Interested in upgrading your digital advertising presence? Netsertive is here to help. Reach out to our team today for a free consultation and get all the details.