Paid advertising yields greater value for marketers when it’s propped up with localized visual content. Here’s why catering the style and message of your marketing campaign for a localized audience can impact your success.
Paid advertising campaigns are powerful programs that yield large quantities of leads or generate demand for many digital marketers. Ads that tell cohesive, personal and relatable stories attract the attention of the target audience. People find an ad engaging when it speaks directly to their needs and lifestyle. But personalized ad campaigns are far more likely to boost conversions.
The messaging in your ads must cleverly articulate the narrative of your brand. Effective ads relate the value of your brand in the minds of your audience. Your audience makes this connection at a subconscious level, triggered by the look and feel of your ad campaigns.
But how do you illustrate your brand’s story in a way that resonates with people?
The Brain is Wired for Visual Content
Image via Shidlovski.
Studies show that the human brain processes new information with support from visual cues and content. It takes less than 1 second for the mind to fully process a visual and interpret the meaning behind it.
Every time we learn a new piece of information, our brains store it as a memory. According to studies, the mind will remember 65% of information from visual content as much as three days after initially viewing it.
For marketers, insights into cognitive functionality play important roles in how to develop campaigns. Positioning and audience personas establish the framework of a brand’s story. We use these guidelines to target and segment our ads to people that data says are most likely to become customers. However, the visuals we use within those ads are what capture people’s attention.
A person most likely sees the ad on their mobile device. The ads appear as people scroll through their social news feeds, which are populated with streams of different content. Most viewers skim through these updates and forget them due to the sheer volume of content in their feed. It takes the right type of visual and targeted to the right types of people to stand out from the clutter.
Localized Visual Content Connects with Audiences
Image via oneinchpunch.
The right type of visual is what resonates with targeted viewers. But localized visual content is what echoes in the minds of your audience.
Remember that people want your brand’s ads to speak to them on an individual level. They want your content to feel personal and your brand relevant to their local community. This is why 90% of consumers prefer personalized and customized content from brands. Custom content is unique from generic material, reflecting the look and feel of a localized setting.
Several brands have incorporated local visual content into their paid advertising campaigns. For example, Skyscanner uses Snapchat ads to initiate direct responses from viewers. Their goal is to make Snapchat and similar platforms key parts of their digital media strategy to boost business goals.
Skyscanner produced a handful of localized videos that feature popular holiday destinations in key target markets. They inserted these videos into their Snapchat ad sets to drive interest in these destinations, and conversions on the ads. The numbers show the cost per impression on these ads declined by three times compared to previous campaigns. The result was double the number of downloads of the Skyscanner app. The personalized content struck a chord in people’s minds. New travelers booked vacations using Skyscanner because of the content promoted by the brand.
Local Ad Visuals Drive Higher Click-Through Rates
Image via wong yu liang.
Brands invest lots of time, budget, and resources into paid advertising campaigns. The reason is very simple. Paid social is a proven channel that generates results. For example, brands that actively run Facebook ads increase clicks on their Facebook pages by 96%.
Paid ads that target the right audience yield greater clicks and engagement with your brand’s social presence. Take the research published by Wordstream on their own customers who advertise on Facebook. The average click-through rate on Facebook ads across all industries is approximately 1%. In some instances, such as brands in the legal or retail industries, the click-through rate is notably higher.
Use those examples to adopt a data-driven approach to your own localized advertising. Suppose you target a specific group of people, living in a very defined market, with distinct tastes or interests. The numbers from Wordstream are general assumptions about the click-to-conversion rate you can expect from your own ads.
Now say that you run that defined campaign with localized visual content. Remember that localized content helped Skyscanner double the number of downloads of their app. They designed their videos to show popular vacation spots to people who would be most interested in those types of getaways. You can anticipate very impressive conversion numbers from your own ads by creating content that similarly resonates at a very localized level. You can then put that content to good use and develop localized awareness ads for Facebook and other platforms that will generate engagement with your brand.
Top image via Vera Petrunina.
Want to learn more about content marketing? Check out these articles:
Inspire Travelers to Become Customers with User-Generated Content
Getting Your Brand Started with Vertical Video Content on IGTV
Using Freelance Work to Feed Your Creative Brain
10 Expert Tips for Taking Photographs in Mixed Light
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