According to research, over 500 million people actively use Instagram stories on a daily basis worldwide. Further reports have proved that 1 in 5 Instagram Stories shared by a brand receives a direct reply, giving brands a direct way to connect with their audience and learn more about them.
Stories can drive tons of engagement for a brand or any personal profile. Moreover, engaging features such as the “Questions Sticker” and creative touches like “Music” make Stories an exciting attribute of Instagram.
What are Instagram Stories Ads?
Instagram story ads are an alternative to newsfeed ads. They allow you to insert a short advertisement between users’ stories. The ads fit the story format, keeping the user experience consistent and the flow uninterrupted. These ads can be composed of either single photos or a video up to 15 seconds long and can be used to achieve various business objectives starting from brand awareness to sales.
Some of the most important objectives of using Instagram story ads are:
Brand Awareness: To increase awareness of a brand by finding people who are likely to be interested in the brand’s products/service.
Reach: To display the ad to a maximum number of people.
Video views: Get more people to view the video content.
Conversions: Drive valuable actions on the app or website.
App installs: Get more people to install the app.
Lead Generation: Drive sales leads to gather information like email addresses and phone numbers.
Traffic: Send more people to visit the website.
Sizes and Specifications for Instagram Stories Ads
There are three sizing formats to choose from while creating Insta story ads: Square- 1:1; Landscape- 1.91:1 and Vertical- 4:5. The recommended resolution is 1080×1920 pixels and the lowest is 600×1067 pixels.
Image Creative
File type: .jpg or .png
File size: 30MB max
Length: Images show for 5 seconds by default
Video Creative
File type: .mp4 or .mov
File size: 4GB max
Length: Up to 15 seconds
Supported codecs: H.264, VP8
Here are some interesting tips to create Instagram story ads that can engage customers to click on your ad:
Design native ad creatives
Insta Story Ads should match the look of organic stories that users get to see every day. Using the same Facebook ad for Instagram would be a bad idea, as Insta story ads should be vertical, short and crisp. The caption should be within 190 characters, because if it exceeds the limit, the caption gets shortened with a ‘read more’ option, and may discourage people to swipe up. Therefore it is important to design native ad creatives, particularly for this platform.
Create the fear of missing out
People desire or enjoy things that have limited supply, high demand and created for a few. This rule of exclusivity should be exploited in ads. Brands should try to develop a unique sense of missing out in ad content. This will build a sense of urgency in the audience and increase the number of clicks, views, reach etc.
Grab attention instantly
Successful advertisers grab the attention of their users in the first few seconds. This is the reason why brands need to ensure that their ad design is unique and visually appealing. Photo ads show for 5 seconds and videos ads for 15 seconds. For a video, brands do not need to use any supporting sales copy or titles. Videos need to be completely self-explanatory. It is important for brands to aptly communicate their message within this timeframe as users won’t be able to return to the ads later. So the first few seconds of the ad will determine whether the audience will take action or not.
Think outside the box, be unique
Create ads that are completely unique, quirky and distinctive from others. For example, an ad resembling a chat between a customer and a brand explaining what needs to be done for signing up is an interesting way to inform people about the process as well as keep them engaged. Making it look like a personal conversation lends authenticity to the ad and viewers are therefore more likely to take action on it.
Source: https://www.singlegrain.com
Use influencer marketing
The conversion rate for a story ad is much higher when a product is recommended by an influencer. 94% of advertisers who have invested in this strategy find it very effective in meeting the objectives or goals of the brand. Influencer marketing can help a brand not only increase awareness but also directly impact sales. What is most important in this case is to choose the right influencer for your brand.
People are interacting more and more meaningfully with brands on their mobile devices. They want content that is easy, convenient and engrossing. Vertical, full-screen Instagram story ads are ideal for that type of content consumption. It is a great way to connect with potential customers. Additionally, it is also one of the few formats that helps brands get complete attention and comes fully equipped with demographic data.
To know more about Instagram Story Ads, leave us a comment and we will get back to you!
“Online video is the Swiss army knife of internet marketing. It really can be used all over the customer lifecycle, whether its customer service, marketing or recruitment.”-Mark Robertson
Videos are considered to have the unique ability to combine elements of various other types of content like text, images and sound into a single, easily digestible and understandable format.
Today, without any doubt, social media videos are an important part of any successful, long-term content marketing strategy. Video content is primarily in demand on social media because of its ability to connect to Generation Y and Millennials between 18 – 33 years.
From a brand’s point of view, social media video content helps to connect with the young and growing audience on an emotional level. This helps build a genuine relationship with the audience which, in turn, can help convert more potential users into buyers.
According to research, 72% of people prefer video over text when learning about a product or service. Therefore, 87% of marketing professionals use video as their preferred marketing tool. It is estimated that by the end of 2019, video marketing will account for around 78% of world mobile data traffic.
The numbers below depict the fast growth of social media video usage:
93% of videos on Twitter are accessed on the go, from mobile devices.
Views for branded video content on YouTube have almost doubled in the last 3 years.
When compared to a photo tweet, a video tweet has 6x higher chance of getting retweeted.
Facebook Live videos receive 10x more comments than a regular video.
Source: https://blog.viralstat.com
Here are some popular and successful video marketing tips:
Upload native video content
Brands should upload and share native videos directly on social channels rather than posting Youtube channel links as it has been found out that native videos perform 10x better on Facebook than compared to links. This clearly means that Facebook is prioritizing videos uploaded on its platform over external video links.
The two possible reasons for native videos to perform better could be:
Native videos begin to play automatically as a viewer scrolls down their feed, while YouTube videos need to be manually played.
Native videos play inside Facebook’s environment, while YouTube videos play on an external page causing users to leave the Facebook platform in order to watch the video.
Focus on story-telling
Storytelling has turned into a new and powerful sales pitch for driving positive results. For successful social media video marketing, brands need to produce videos that evoke emotions and provoke viewers to take action. It helps a brand deliver a clear message that the audience can understand and relate to. It also brings out the brand’s personality in a positive light.
Some steps to implement storytelling using videos for social media video marketing are:
Introduce the right kind of characters to create a bond or a connection with the target audience.
Add an emotional angle that helps grab and retain the attention of viewers.
Have the resolution to help viewers understand what you want to convey through the story.
Use a CTA button
To get good ROI from social media video marketing, brands need to have a strong and clear call-to-action embedded in it. To create an effective call-to-action, brands should first identify their objective or goal. For instance, if a brand wants to gather leads and initiate conversion, then they should focus on creating video content that encourages the audience to share their contact information.
Facebook provides brands with the option of adding a CTA button like “Shop Now”, “Learn More”, “Book Now” in videos once the video is added on the platform.
Share short, relevant videos
80% of social media content is being consumed via mobile devices. Short format videos do not consume much time and deliver their claims right away. Successful content on social media revolves around instant gratification because people now want to consume content without wasting time.
One of the most effective ways to leverage the power of short social media video content is to focus on creating instructional or how-to videos that shed light on a product or help consumers understand the solution to their problem. If done right, these videos attract the right attention, spread awareness and improve the organic reach for a brand.
The main concern for brands should be how to leverage this medium in a strategic way. Video can help increase organic traffic and conversions, it helps in brand recall and increases the revenue of a brand. However, converting a video into an actionable and ROI driving force, requires strategic thinking.
To know more about video marketing, leave us a message and we will get back to you!
Innumerable exclamation marks, strong and heavy-sounding words and hyper-dramatic titles – the perfect combination of clickbait headlines. The Internet is full of them as everyone is trying to make readers click their headline over their competitor’s.
However, the truth is that clickbait headlines can be misleading and often fail to deliver what they promise. This is one of the reasons why Facebook updated its algorithm for reducing clickbait titles on the user’s newsfeed. Google also has taken a lot of steps to ensure that clickbait titles don’t get much prominence.
“8 out of 10 people will read a title, but just 2 out of 10 readers will continue reading the article. This is why it is imperative to put a huge emphasis on headlines.”
The good news is, you can still get ample clicks on your headlines without resorting to clickbait tactics. Here are the 5 best ways to ensure more clicks and higher engagement –
1. Include Numbers
According to reports, “there’s a 20% increase in CTR for blog titles that contain a number.”
Headlines that contain numbers perform better compared to those without them. This is because numbers are predictable and easily processed by the human brain. A blog title with a number indicates that a reader will be offered a specific set of ideas and also maintains familiarity.
Source: hootsuite.com
You can use numbers in your blog title in several ways. It can be to show successful metrics or results, statistics, listing steps to reach a certain goal or sharing tips. In the case of ‘steps to follow’ blogs, having too many steps can overwhelm or confuse the reader. It’s better to keep it within 10 points.
Note: Numbers that are written as digits work better than numbers that are spelt out.
2. Keep the Headline Short
A study found that “for Facebook, posts with 40 character headlines got 86% higher engagement compared to others, while posts that had 80 character headlines got 66% lower engagement.”
Often people think that writing a long headline means the possibility of including more points that may interest the reader. However, a short headline makes it easier for people to read, especially from mobile devices. Since your audience spends more time on mobile, headlines should always be concise and easy-to-read.
Research by Kissmetrics revealed that a headline that is readable in a single glance is more effective in communicating the message. Moreover, readers are most likely to take in the first and last three words. Therefore, make those words the most impactful to pique interest.
Source: CoSchedule
In the case of Twitter, using up the entire character limit for a headline may not always drive positive results. Ideally, tweets that have 70 to 100 characters are known to get 17% higher engagement rate.
3. Give a Personal Touch
“Headlines that address readers in the second person are among the highest performing ones.”
Titles that include words like ‘you’ or ‘your’ appeal to readers instantly and help in making a connection with them, even if subconsciously. The natural reaction becomes ‘this story is for me’ and so readers are more likely to click on the blog and read it further.
Most of your online readers search for content as a solution to a problem. Moreover, educating your audience with good quality content is a great strategy to increase your fan base and encourage more clicks. Therefore, titles like ‘How to Humanize your Brand with Social Media Marketing Services’ or ‘How to use Facebook as a Marketing Strategy for Your Startup’ would encourage the reader to read the entire content.
At times, a first-person headline can also prove to be very powerful. It tends to provide an insight into the author’s life, thus making readers feel more connected.
4. Keyword Research
Keywords are very helpful for search engines to find relevant content. Including words that your target audience is searching for in the blog title automatically increases the chances of clickability.
Not just the blog content, your blog title should also have the readability and sharing potential to go viral on social media channels. This will lead to higher website visits, further leading to more direct traffic. There are various tools like Google Trends and Keyword Planner that can help compare and choose the best keywords for your title.
Source: FreeManSocialMedia
At times, it may be difficult to incorporate the exact keyword in the title. For example, the keyword ‘Bangalore digital marketing agency’ cannot be used as it becomes a grammatical error. Using ‘digital marketing agency in Bangalore’ will still be relevant as the context remains the same and Google will still identify it as a keyword.
Tip: Including the keyword at the beginning of the title can lead to better rankings.
5. Use Popular Trends to your Advantage
Adding what’s trending on social media or a reference of pop culture to your blog title instantly increases the clickability rate. Moreover, trending titles can help rank higher in search results. For example, topical blogs on Friendship Day, Mother’s Day or Diwali, posted during those particular events will encourage people to read the whole article.
Adding a movie name or popular dialogue also helps to grab the attention of readers. However, make sure that it is inserted creatively in the title and does not look forced.
Source: jseo.com
A headline can be both click-worthy and shareable without being labelled as clickbait. Audiences nowadays are aware of the increasingly tricky headlines and other gimmicks. What is important is to have a headline that triggers curiosity and evokes positive emotions. To know more about how to get maximum engagement for your content, leave us a message and we’ll get back to you.
“There is a 1.07x increase in watching content on Facebook during Diwali.”
Brands have always made the best use of the festive season to bring out innovative campaignsto press their message and aim for strong brand recall. While hitting the emotional chord by weaving stories around family, friends, food and laughter has been popular among most brands, a few of them chose to break the clutter and instead focus on meaningful and thought-provoking concepts.
Here are 5 best unconventional Diwali campaigns that managed to break the clutter in the sea of sameness –
1. Samsonite – #DiwaliKaSafar
For a majority of people, Diwali is the season of homecoming. And there are many who give up visiting their own home so that they can take others home. Samsonite’s campaign focuses on these people who choose work commitment over family and encourages everyone to show gratitude to them.
The video features a bus driver, an app cab driver, an air hostess and a train ticket collector who work during the festive season, with smiles on their faces, even though they are longing to be with their loved ones. The ad urges viewers to thank these selfless people who help them complete their #DiwaliKaSafar.
Source: Facebook
The campaign went viral on social media with 2.6M views on YouTube. Facebook witnessed 7.2M views, 116K reactions, 2.8K comments and 21K shares. Author and actor Twinkle Khanna also applauded the campaign and shared it on her Instagram page.
A brand that has always laid emphasis on genuine conversations, Vodafone’s Diwali campaign urges people to go against the trend of sending forwarded messages by sending personalized greetings.
The digital film plays a story of how a grandson sends a forwarded message to his grandmother on Diwali, while grandma puts in a lot of effort in sending a personalized wish to him. The campaign highlights the fact that personalized messages carry more warmth and help people bring closer.
Source: Facebook
The video witnessed 7.9M views on Facebook, with 120K reactions, 1.8K comments and 8.8K shares and 32M views on YouTube.
Enveloping culture and tradition in the festive season, Tanishq launched their ‘Virasat’ collection and conceptualized a social media campaign to promote it. The brand has always been a trendsetter in creating unique campaigns and Riwaazon Wali Diwali was no different.
Along with age-old traditions like wearing new clothes, decorating the house with lights and buying sweets, Tanishq focuses on the culture of gifting jewellery – an integral part of the festive season.
Source: Facebook
The product-oriented campaign has been further promoted with the brand’s ambassador, Deepika Padukone.
Source: Instagram
The ad campaign witnessed 1M views on YouTube. Apart from that, the brand also added stickers with customized surnames on GIPHY for people to search and share.
4. One Plus x Snapchat – Taking Diwali To The World
With the belief that technology plays a great role in forming deep connections globally, One Plus and Snpachat collaborated for a special Diwali campaign by creating Lenses. These Lenses used Snapchat’s Landmarker technology for enabling AR experiences by displaying lights and firecracker explosions.
The feature was effective in popular destinations across the world like Tower Bridge, Eiffel Tower, Gateway of India, among others.
The video gathered 2.2M views on YouTube, 6.6M views on Facebook with 59K reactions, 600+ comments and 2.2K shares.
The Diwali Unboxing with Chintu campaign gives out a hard-hitting message of how thousands of children sacrifice their childhood to make crackers for lighting up other’s Diwali. It starts with a young boy Chintu who proudly shows off the crackers he has made, along with the risks he had to take.
The video ends with the message that every child should have the opportunity to live a normal childhood and urges people to stop unboxing crackers.
Source: Facebook
The video has been shot the way modern YouTube videos are shot, thus managing to create intrigue among the viewers. It gathered 630K views on Facebook, with 17K reactions, 280+ comments and 1.2K shares.
Diwali has always been that time of the year when brands put their best foot forward to connect with customers at a personal level. Can you think of any other ad campaign that has managed to touch your heart?
Do you know “70% of startups struggle with scalability”?
Growing a startup into a profitable business requires a clear vision and a lot of hard work. To grow from a startup to an industry leader, priorities may have to be changed, strategies need to be modified and new plans need to be made.
The ability to effectively scale a startup can make or break the business. Planning to scale too fast can create organizational issues that may get hard to manage. On the other hand, scaling at a very slow pace can lead to missing out on good opportunities bought by greater resources.
While planning for the development and scalability of your startup, take a look at these five important points that will help generate more revenue –
1. Be unique instead of being just better
In order to scale your startup to an established business, competitive positioning is not the best way to attain industry dominance. Businesses mainly focus on being better than their competitors, but often this attribute may not matter to the customer or you may not be able to prove it.
What will set you apart is if you can diagnose the pain points of your customers and be the only solution provider for the same. Instead of communicating that you do it better than your competitors, communicate that you are the only one who can do it.
Source: Evolve Brand Design
2. Ensure your product has a market pull
A satisfactory annual revenue is an indication that the product/service you sell has found a good market fit. Your potential customers are most likely to buy what you have to offer, and there will be your annual sales report to prove the same. However, if you want your startup to upscale, there are other things that need to be taken care of.
If you notice that your business is struggling with every sale and it is taking a lot of effort to acquire new customers, then it may be because you have a market fit but not enough market pull. Market pull is the need for a product coming from the marketplace.
It is important that your product/service should not be ‘good-to-have’, but be a ‘must-have’ necessity. Find the pull and your business is sure to upscale and flourish.
Source: ResearchGate
3. Boost your marketing
The more people that know about your business, the more are the chances of successful scalability and revenue generation. Focus on marketing strategies and scalability will automatically follow.
With digital marketing, startups can easily predict and determine the ROI of different marketing campaigns. Accordingly, the budget can also be determined for optimizing conversion rates and increasing sales.
Source: MyCafeBlog
Depending on your business and audience, one of the best marketing strategies is content marketing. Make sure to create as well as share valuable and high-quality content to keep the audience interested.
According to Hubspot, “Cost-per-lead drops by as much as 80% within just five months of switching to content marketing, and it generates 4x more leads per $1000 spent within three years.”
4. Use technology to the fullest
“Smart work is the new hard work.”
With the advancement in technology, there are numerous growth tools available to execute your strategies at each stage of the growth hacking funnel. Find all such relevant tools and services that will help in the growth and generate revenue.
A good example of making optimum use of technology is using conversion rate optimization and A/B testing for everything that is being done. Be it landing pages, content, or email marketing, these tools can help improve the current situation and fix the issues that are currently not working.
Source: Conversio
In terms of SEO, using long-tailed keywords that may have a lower volume but a higher conversion rate is better than using higher volume ones – the reason being low volume keywords are easier to target and reveals the intent of the searcher better.
5. Check these 3 important aspects
During the time you’re scaling your startup for more revenue, it is important to keep a check on the following 3 areas-
Hiring – Hiring too many employees, especially those who act as middle managers during the process of scaling can affect the proficiency of your company. With the right people on board, your business can scale faster than what you probably thought.
Expense – A lot of startups have the tendency to spend more unnecessarily once they have raised enough revenue in the fundraising period. This can later prove to be detrimental to the business. All expenses must be focused on business growth.
Building – Keep your focus on building one product/service better than the competitors before diverging into new things. Even if the existing product/service has found the market pull and is doing well in terms of revenue, it is better not to rush into launching additional features or producing a new category.
With the right system, process, planning and people, scalability of a startup for higher revenues is not an impossible task. There may be obstacles on the way, but keeping these above-mentioned points in mind before scaling can make the whole journey much easier. You can also consult a startup growth partner to help your brand in the way forward.
Humanizing a brand through social media marketing means allowing social media experts to interact with the brand’s audience with a personal touch. It also means breathing life into the unique brand voice that will forge connections that will further keep followers engaged. Engaging with the audience through social media on a meaningful level helps humanize a brand.
The reason why Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are successful is because they encourage brands to have two-way conversations with their audience. Hence to lead these conversations into valuable conversions, a brand needs to display their human side through social media interactions and posts.
The modern-day consumer values intense personalization and engagement, and humanizing a brand is one great way to draw their attention.
Let’s talk about how leveraging social media to humanize a brand can help foster more engaging connections with the audience:
Use Emojis to Encourage Emotional Responses
Emojis are mostly available on all popular social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They give marketers an easy way to communicate emotional interest with visuals, that can be used to keep the audience hooked in different ways.
A brand can also attribute a human emotion to the overall persona of the business during specific events by using the “feeling/activity” feature on Facebook.
Show a Sense of Humour
Showing off your funny bone is an easy and effective way to connect with the audience on social media. The three factors to keep in mind when using humour are have fun, share information and stay in control. It is also important to make sure that the humour being used doesn’t hurt the sentiments of other people.
Bring the Team into the Spotlight
Strong and authentic brands attach loyalty not only to their products but also to their employees. Audiences are also interested to know the people behind a great brand. Letting them see the people behind the business is a powerful way to humanize your brand.
Sharing pictures of celebrations, behind-the-scenes videos, fun outings and team bonding activities on the website and social media are all great ways to show off company culture and form a connection with the audience.
Share user-generated Content
Sharing user-generated content helps a brand humanize in three ways:
● It is flattering and amusing to the user whose photo and content gets featured.
● It shows other consumers that the brand has a good reputation and relationship with its customers.
● It shows that the products are good and people enjoy using them.
Instead of asking the audience or followers to blindly trust a brand or believe their claims, consumers will see real-life people loving the products or services which will promote trustworthiness and brand loyalty.
Customer Appreciation
Letting customers know that you care about and appreciate them is one of the best ways to humanize a brand. Personal touches such as company-branded merchandise, special discounts or celebratory gifts with a personalized message go a long way in establishing a connect.
To make things more budget-friendly, brands may appreciate new and loyal customers by sending a welcome or thank you email.
Avoid Posting like a Marketer
Avoid using industry jargon, formal sentences or any talk in third-person. Use vocabulary that is warm, inviting and personalized. Social media is all about creating dialogue and building relationships. Create posts that are conversational in nature and use more of “you” and “me” phrases.
Social media marketing for brands is an essential part of a business marketing strategy. It helps to connect with customers, build brand awareness and also increase sales and leads. Humanizing a brand will boost this on an overall basis. With the above-mentioned tips for humanizing a brand, consumers will be able to connect with the brand, relate to it on a deeper level and want to have a relationship with the organisation on a long term basis.
To know more on humanizing a brand or social media marketing services, leave us a message and we will get back to you!
