Creative Team reveals 6 easy ways to make an ad stand out from the crowd

Galit Gan
Creative Director
& Co-Founder

Juliana Soto von Arnim
Junior Digital
Creative

You may have noticed that the impact of online ads is dropping because of how intrusive they have become. While ad blocker downloads increase as people prefer not to see advertising while browsing, brands have started to look for less intrusive and more engaging ways to attract their audience with digital advertising.

Finding the perfect strategy to achieve great results in your marketing campaigns can be a long and difficult process, but it is feasible and very much lies in the creatives.

The Creative Team of Whichit is here to give some tips that can help you make the most of your advertising. Facing the constant challenge of coming up with ideas for creative and engaging ads for Whichit’s diverse client portfolio, they have accomplished extraordinary results with them in past campaigns. See some case studies here.   

Today, Whichit’s Creative Team shares with you 6 easy ways for making an ad stand out from the crowd:

1.   Appealing copywriting

People come across dozens of ads every day, therefore, you need to make sure that your advertisement captures your audience’s attention in seconds. You can get there by creating a headline your audience is interested in and is written in a way that will make them curious enough to continue reading. People pay attention to a header that is teaching them ‘how to do’ something, stating an interesting fact, asking them a question, or giving them a direct offer. When creating a powerful headline, also include the most important benefit of your product or service. Once you have it, test it and rewrite it when you see that it is not getting the expected results anymore.

For example, if your audience likes travelling, you could write an attention-grabbing headline such as ‘How to travel for free,’ or you could invite them to answer a question like ‘What’s your dream holiday destination?’. 

2.   Tell them something they don’t know

Be creative and choose to provide content that will lead your audience to engage with your ad. Start by mentioning a trending topic or a seasonal event coming up. Including numbers or statistics to support your idea is encouraged, since this will not only show credibility but also prove how helpful your product or service has been for your clients. 

Also, consider engaging your audience with a personality quiz in which the outcome is based on their preferences, for example, ‘Discover what type of traveller you are’. This type of content is always popular because the audience enjoys discovering and sharing the result they get in the end. A meaningful interaction like this will result in a loyal customer for years.

3.  Use striking images

90% of the information our brain processes is visual. People love visuals, and advertisers know it. Captivate your audience by including exciting graphics in your digital ads. Always consider the colours you’re going to use. Try not to choose a background that is too flashy, bright, or one in which your product is lost. Also, if you’re using text in the images, make sure it is readable and is not getting lost in the details of the image. Never neglect your branding and be consistent with what you include in your ads so that your audience can easily identify you.

Source: Graphix Artist

Source: Ikea by DDB Tribal

It is not about making the elements in your ad compete with each other, but highlighting the most important message. Read more tips on how to make your ad awesome.

4.   Make your ad interactive

Bringing the audience to interact with your ad will draw more meaning out of it and can result in a win-win situation for the brand-consumer relationship.

Interactive ads create a richer experience for your audience, and making them more involved will generate greater interest in the brand. But, ‘Interactive ad’ - What does that mean? Interactive ads are defined as involving mutual action between consumers and producers without having the consumer click through. Asking the user to play a little game or take part in a quiz will be a great way to increase the click-through rate of your ad, as interactive content generates 2x more conversions than passive content (source: Kapost).

Click the example to see a great idea for an interactive ad>>> 

5.   Personalisation makes the difference

McKinsey’s study found that companies using “data-driven personalisation as the core factor for marketing and sales decisions can improve marketing ROI by 15% to 20%”. Data is the key here. The clever use of data and real-time information will allow marketers to create online ads that are relevant and personalised, engaging the right people with the right information.

How can you actually do that? Walk the extra mile and split your target audience into smaller groups (by interests, ages, etc). Tailoring your message to individuals using different creative and copy will increase the chances that your ad can actually make an impact.

Retargeting is not only for advanced marketers! Ad targeting based on individual online behaviour can be easily achieved by placing a Facebook/Google pixel into your campaign. A retargeting campaign is not limited only to online advertising. A good tip is to place a Facebook pixel in emails and then retarget the receivers who open with a personalized paid ad (check how you can do that using MailChimp).

Whichit’s Creative team embraces personalisation whilst using a bespoke Call-to-Action. “While creating an interactive ad unit, we are tailoring different commercial offers, based on the users’ outcomes or interactions. This way we significantly increase the chances of the user to interact with a commercial offer that is relevant for him”, says Galit Gan, Co-founder & Creative Director of Whichit.

6.   Pick the right ad size

Effective digital ads are designed to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website. The size of the elements you include in your ad, like logo, headline and copywriting, will determine which size is best for you. Also, a tip that will help you collect more clicks is using the most effective size ads recommended by Google.

If you’re including text over an image, use a size that will help your audience read it easily like ‘Medium Page’ (MPU) or ‘half page’ (Double MPU). If your headline and copywriting are both short, use the ‘Leaderboard’ size so they don’t have trouble reading your message, but take into consideration that in this case, your image will be minimal. Check below some ads from Ebay:

Source: eBay

That’s it for now.

Are you ready to start creating your ad?
Try Whichit and get the process started!

Whichit is an online platform that allows you to easily create your own interactive ads and run it on multiple channels. The ads are fun, innovative and undisruptive, enabling you to gain actionable insights about your audience while they interact with them, all in real time. Additionally, Whichit contains an interactive analytics dashboard that summarises the data collected from your campaign in a way that’s very easy to comprehend so you don’t have to spend hours on it.

References:
Seiter, C (2016, June 1) 8 Winning Headline Strategies and the Psychology Behind Them

Shopify or WooCommerce user?... We have the tool for you

Noémie Girault
Business Development Intern

If you use Shopify or WooCommerce - you may find yourself struggling with getting visibility or generating traffic to your site. You may even struggle with targeting the perfect client with the right products. Well, no worries!

Whichit has exactly what you need to get this very much wanted traffic and convert it into revenue. What is this miracle solution? Whichit Interactive Commercial Content.

Here's how you do it:


1. Ask a question

Ask your audience a simple question through image-based polls or quizzes to segment them and cut down the sales funnel. These rich-media ad units can be shown on social media, embedded on your site, in your Whichit display campaign through Google AdWords, and more.
 

2. Generate high level of engagement rate with Whichit Interactive Commercial Content

Once your audience has voted, the item they chose is already loaded to the basket and they can be taken straight to the check-out page.

Check out this demo.

3. It’s really simple to set up!

All you have to do is paste your basket page URL and boom! the magic is done. So, if you want to get more out of your display campaigns use Whichit to help shorten the sales funnel! 

See how to create your basket URL with Whichit:
 
If you’re a Shopify user, here is all the information you need to build your basket URL.

If you like to Woo your clients with WooCommerce, this link will tell you how to create your basket URL.

If you’re interested, would like to hear more, or need some help getting started just let us know!

I want more info

I want to learn more about Shopify and WooCommerce

Thanks for reading,

The Whichit Team

5 Facts to help you plan Mother’s Day Marketing Campaigns

Alexandra Radugina
Senior Marketing Manager

Mother's Day is another great opportunity for all types of retailers to encourage consumers to spend more on beautiful gifts. If you want to create a stellar promotion, you have to start with a plan; below you can find some interesting facts that can help you.

1. Mother’s Day in numbers

Mother's Day is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent and precisely three weeks before Easter Sunday. The 2017 Mother’s Day spend was valued at almost 1.4 billion pounds, in comparison to the 700 million pounds spent for Father’s Day 2017. 30% of the purchases were made online followed by a Mother’s Day spark in social media posts. According to Facebook, people around the world uploaded 1B+ photos and videos, which shows how much people care about family and how grateful they are.

2. Shoppers' persona

Harvest Digital suggest that 67% of female shoppers purchase more gifts than men. But on average, men spend £10 pounds more on their gifts. Also, the most significant spenders belong to the age range of 25-34 years old. Those insights can give some ideas on who you want to target with your campaign, as well as how to gain social media boost on Mother’s Day itself.

3. What are the most common presents…

Mothers’ Day's gifts aren’t just flowers, cards or chocolates. These types of gifts are a must-have addition to a main treat. Shoppers are more interested in personalised gifts that stand out from the rest. There has been a noticeable increase in personalised presents in the UK, and we estimate an increase in that sector this Mother’s Day.  The hottest gifts for Mother’s Day are:

4. What Mummy really wants…

We found out that what Mothers actually dream of receiving on Mother’s Day are surprisingly affordable:

5. Promotional tactics to attract shoppers:

The goal of this Mother’s Day marketing opportunity is of course to increase sales and revenue. Marketers use the full range of promotional tactics to attract shoppers: special product selection, email marketing, social campaigns, price promotions. According to Bing Ads, more than 60% of Mother’s Day gift searches are made from a mobile device. Searches increase by up to four times in the 48 hours leading up to Sunday as well as most of purchases are made last minute. So, starting a marketing campaign just two-three weeks before the day would be a wise tactic.  Last year’s statistics show us that email remarketing was most effective the week before Mother’s Day.

What do shoppers want? What leads them to make up their mind about a purchase? The main decision-making factors— the same as for any other occasion, will be online search. According to HootSuite, 60% of shoppers use social networks for product search, so consider running a social media campaign to reach your consumers.  Another factor is saving time on shopping: If you can offer consumers all-in-one services like a card, flowers and chocolate there will be a greater chance of success. Adding your slogan, hashtag, or brand to any gift pack can encourage some consumers to thank you online.  Cooperate with local businesses (i.e. flower shops, spas, restaurants) and create offers together.

Shoppers want inspiration for Mother’s Day presents. Look for a personalised shopping experience based on their buying behaviour.  Offering savings and rewards based on past purchases is a proven tactic. You can also offer consumers a personalised gift finder (Whichit example), which will lead them to the perfect present or add the competitive element to keep participants checking back and sharing their contributions for more exposure. How about a mum and daughter selfie competition? Perfect for Mother’s Day.

Click here to see full infographic!

5 tips for eCommerce marketing on Valentine's Day

Alexandra Radugina
Senior Marketing Manager

Can you feel love in the air? If not, you should feel sales opportunities are!

An average of £980 million was spent on Valentine's day in the UK in 2017 (globaldata)  and according to some, Valentine's Day is considered the second-busiest holiday buying season of a year.
One of the general holiday marketing rules tells us to never, ever ignore a holiday. It would be a mistake ignoring Valentine's day just because you’re not in a flower or jewellery business… As long as you come up with a good marketing strategy, almost everything becomes ‘gift-able’.

Not sure of how to start with your marketing campaign for Valentine's Day?
We’ve prepared a few tips to help you stand out from your competitors and engage with your audience in a different way, to get your business measurable results:

1. Add a V-Day section on your website

Your first goal is to create a dedicated Valentine's section on your website, to showcase the range of products with straightforward navigation for ‘gifts for Him’ and ‘gifts for Her’, as it could simplify further product searches. The second goal is to show products in an attractive and romantic way.

In the pre-Valentine's Day shopping period the challenge is to connect with your customers by being helpful and reducing shopping stress. While telling your customers to buy your products could be considered a bit bold, you could incentivise them by including your products in a gift guide that helps them find inspiration. Also, it never fails to use extra selling points like a free next day delivery or a 10% off voucher, or even a small gift like a chocolate bar with any purchase.

2. Market early in a smart way

Don’t wait until the last minute to start your marketing! According to statistics, a month isn't too early, whereas marketing a week before could be a bit risky. Additionally, consider targeting last-minute shoppers in the week before 14th of February.

Don't forget to display delivery deadlines on orders to ensure arrival on or by the special day. Offering or proposing gift-wrapping could be a great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors as well.

3. Emails for lead generation

Email marketing is a powerful tool for engagement and customer acquisition. For Valentine's emails, you should include something creative that will spark your customer's interest: Valentine's gifts, seasonal outfits, tips on how to choose the perfect present or creative gift wrapping tutorials. Your design should be thematic. The Call-To-Action should stand out in the email so that users can find it with ease.

4. Social Native Advertising

Did you know that 71% of customers make purchase decisions based on social media referrals? Target your Valentines Day customers with Social Media Native Advertising. It's a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach customers without disrupting their browsing experience. Most of the social networks give you a full range of targeting options like "gender", "age", "relationship status", "life event" and many others, so it’s quite easy to send your message to the right audience. You can boost your sales by targeting more men than women, as they spend almost twice as much on presents.

Moreover, Valentine's Day advertising campaigns should be creative enough to break through other advertisers' messaging. Stand out from the crowd and drive not just sales but the growth of your social network in future promotions. You want users to interact with your ads so that it reaches a broader audience at lower cost. Customers will be encouraged to share content only if they enjoy it. The best type of ads that you can use to engage, interact and drive sales are Interactive Native Ads. Have you already tried it?

Another excellent way to promote your business through social media in a fun and interactive way is hosting a competition. It can increase your customer base by reaching friends of the people who share the competition, or they invite their friends to participate.

5. Find a partner

Let's say that your business is selling a correctly targeted product for Valentine's Day, but you don’t feel comfortable with dealing with your e-marketing alone. Find a partner who is and would be happy to benefit from your services! It is a win-win solution as you can split promotional costs and gain each other's customer base.  Come on, it is time to double your efforts to increase your sales this Valentine's Day!

Using a combination of these approaches and planning in advance is the way to a successful Valentine's Day marketing campaign. Also, don’t forget to track and monitor your campaign with the analytics tools.

Happy V-day,
From the Whichit team

Interactive Commercial Content – Content Marketing Trends

Phuong Huyen Linh Le
Business Development Intern

Customers receive thousands of messages, on average 285 social posts per day along with 27 million content pieces are created. The content of any brand’s message could easily be ignored by consumers and even blocked.

So, what should businesses do not to miss or forever lose the opportunity to reach their target customers?

Keeping up to date with the latest trends in Content Marketing is one of the best solutions that any business owner or marketer should focus on.
Interactive Content is one of the top five Content Marketing trends in 2017 that businesses should take advantage of in order to make their businesses’ content win the hearts of their customers.  According to Ceros, 93% of marketers agree interactive content is effective in educating buyers.

How can you attract users to interact with your ‘Interactive Content’?

Interactive content allows users to personalise and participate in the content presented to them. By helping consumers see themselves in the brand’s experience, the technique offers the potential to deepen engagement and drive greater satisfaction.

There are countless ways for marketers to ‘pull’ users to interact with their brand. We listed below five effective ways and current 2017 trends in Interactive Content Marketing:

1. Questionnaires

Polls, Surveys and Quizzes are one of the basic forms of interactive content. Use them to test your audience’s knowledge or opinions on a relevant topic and then generate a shareable report card so they can compare their results with their friends.

Demand for interactive content has been increasing, but most content marketers should consider how they can create interactive questionnaires that hold an audience's attention.

What's your favourite colour?

If you were looking for a way to make your advertising alluring for your audience, Whichit offers an innovative tool that helps you naturally pull your audience into your brand’s world:
Whichit’s flagship product is a highly engaging Interactive Commercial ad unit:  a fun and addictive image-based poll, revealing a customised commercial offer based on the poll’s outcome. By using Whichit, advertisers and marketers can create rich, commercially driven interactive content, delivering a new and enhanced experience for their audience and providing your audience the perfect call-to-action at just the right moment. See the example.

2. Contests

Contest or competitions are another great way to create an interactive marketing campaign, both have the potential to go viral and pull a lot of participants and new potential customers in.

COMPETITION! What's your favourite Summer destination?

Great contests have proven to tempt consumers and inspire engagement. Competitions not only attract public participation and interest, but also help the brand building its ‘LoveMarks’. In addition, contests require some form of application, which is when marketers can collect valuable consumer data.

Whichit is an easy and effective way to create beautiful, fun contests in minutes that allows advertisers to collect information from customers in return for their participation in a competition. See the example.
 

 

3. Viral Videos

Viewers love a good viral video - video content that is so entertaining they readily share it across their social network feeds. Hardly a week goes by that you aren't shown a viral video from a friend, or are showing one to a friend yourself.

Sharing became a valued and premium metric, one very difficult to drive, because it’s completely voluntary; the decision of an individual to share content can’t be bought. Other than ‘a purchase’, there’s no more intimate and influential metric than a social share.

These days, many brands use Viral Videos for their marketing campaigns. The brands currently doing it know how to tailor it to their overall business objectives, have the people, budget and data to pull it off.
Whichit has recently launched their SnapchatXWhichit campaigns, allowing advertisers to create short, 100% full-screen branded videos for Snapchatters followed by Whichit’s unique ad unit with a commercial call-to-action. These campaigns generate 5X more Click-through-rate than other social media advertising, placing the videos as a top interactive marketing tool and a brand closer to their audience’s mind and heart.

Read more about the innovative Snapchat X Whichit campaigns

4. Live Stream

Live Stream allows customers to directly interact with customers, by answering questions directly under the customers’ comments in real-time and even afterwards. This new form has emerged from the end of 2016 and will continue to explode in 2017.

5. KOL - Key Opinion Leaders (Influencer Marketing)

According to a study by Dinesen, influencers can increase advertising campaigns' ROI by 11x compared to the average. KOLs are the trend makers helping to educate the market, and they have many fans and followers. A brand can use KOLs through live stream campaigns, social posts or through PR articles in print and web publications.

How can Whichit help you create ‘Interactive Commercial Content’ campaigns?

Before purchasing a product, customers tend to check and ask for others’ opinion about that product. By using Whichit, after answering fun interactive polls or quizzes, the audience will reveal the shareable ‘Engage Card’ – Engage Cards are the commercial actionable Call-To-Action layer that redirects users to bespoke content, based on their votes. They achieve up to 95% engagement rate per campaign and allow customers to compare their results with those who also answer that question. Whichit Engage Cards are your way to convert traffic into revenue, based on your campaign goals.
By using Whichit, advertisers can easily create ‘Interactive Commercial Content’ in minutes, wrap it into a campaign and share it on the brand's social media channels, embed it on their website or even as display advertising with paid traffic, targeting a specific audience.

Want to learn more? Contact us to get more information or simply register for FREE and create your first Interactive Content Campaign:

LIMITED OFFER: Register for FREE & Get $50 Advertising Budget using code: WelcomeHP-50

Our New Analytics Dashboard Has Been Released

Hi everyone,

If you’ve ever run a marketing campaign, one of the biggest pain points is understanding what you can develop next time in order to improve your communications. It all boils down to understanding your audience while communicating in a manner that relates to them.

Over the past 9 months, we have piloted Whichit with publishers, brands and media agencies, all of whom created highly engaging Whichit posts like these. Whichit is not only a visual, engaging post; when users vote on a Whichit, they are actually stating a personal preference.

One request we’ve received from our customers was to help them learn more about their audience’s preferences. This is why we are super proud to introduce our analytics dashboard:

Now you can visually see your audiences’ preferences, download the data to excel and gain consumer behaviour insights directly from your content.  
 

So, what information is available for you on our new Whichit dashboard?

• Your Activity graph: presents unique views, number of votes and your calculated engagement rate.
• Traffic referrals table: reports visits to webpages on which your Whichit Post has been embedded.
• Completion rate funnel shows the user flows from the number of unique views to the commercial Call-to-Action clicks.
• Votes geography: presents where your votes came from on a map.

If you’re already a Whichit user, check it out now - simply head over to the home page and click “View statistics” on any of your Whichit Posts.

If you don’t have a Whichit account yet, try it now: free for one month!

Until next time,
The Whichit team