February 21, 2024
Is Ads miraculous and does it sell any product?
Marketing campaigns focused on the digital environment grow exponentially each year, and the trend is for them to increase more and more. This is because digital marketing offers several advantages for everyone involved, such as, for example, the possibility of tracking product delivery and a greater focus on the target audience. Currently, there are several options of platforms where it is possible to advertise products and services. The main ones are Google Ads and Meta Ads.
These platforms allow configuring the format types (with images or videos) and of target audience (gender, age, location) of the ad, the time this ad will be aired and the investment required for the campaign. The idea is that the action reaches the profile of people the advertiser desires and that these people are led to act, whether by visiting a website, making purchases, subscribing, or engaging in a social network or event.
Physical product
Before the digital environment was something accessible, to acquire a product people needed to go to a physical store. Today there are several virtual stores, such as Amazon, Magazine Luiza, and Mercado Livre, which offer a variety of items. Products are displayed with photos and reviews from people who have already purchased them, and the price tends to be lower than in physical stores, since virtual establishments do not need to bear many of the costs of physical stores (rent, electricity, etc.).
These products can be advertised on various different platforms, to expand sales. The person responsible for the marketing strategy plans the advertising campaign, defining the target audience, the investment cost, the expected profit, the duration of the campaign, and how the monitoring of competitors will be done.
For physical products, the digital marketing campaign can be worked on in conjunction with the physical marketing one. A good example of this are the products from the cosmetics company O Boticário, whose campaigns virtually promote launches and promotions and, once a month, offer a free gift that the person has to request virtually, but needs to pick up at the physical store. Once there, the consumer gets the store experience in terms of service and olfactory perception, and gets the chance to buy any product with a discount.
Digital Product
For products that do not exist in the physical environment, most campaigns are restricted to digital marketing. It could be an app, a streaming service, or the popular NFT images (digital art sold on “blockchain” platforms), much discussed in recent months. The format of the campaigns can vary between appearing as advertising on social media, appearing as an ad in apps, or integrating into search engine rankings, such as Google.
Although most campaigns are geared towards digital marketing, it is also possible to use the physical form. One example is the launches that the streaming service Netflix usually does, organizing interviews with actors and directors to promote a movie launch event or publicizing products in subway stations through banners.
Target audience x product
One of the main pieces of information to be gathered when planning the promotion of a product or service is regarding its target audience. More important than the product is understanding who you want to sell to: a middle-class teenager, an adult already in the job market, a housewife, a businesswoman, or an elderly person?
Recently, Stanley has gained notoriety on social media and television news due to a large increase in its profits. This American brand of thermal bottles, initially more targeted towards a male audience – from construction workers to Army soldiers – today manufactures pieces in various colors and formats, in order to target the young American female audience, a niche where the consumption of these bottles is growing the most on social networks, selling out on many websites and physical stores.
Influencer
Despite being a relatively new area, the trend of using influential people on social media is already a reality. Brands increasingly seek influential people, the “influencers”, within their niche to leverage the promotion of their products. In Brazil, one of the best known is Lu from Magazine Luiza, a digital “influencer” who promotes the chain’s products, launches, and promotions.
The campaign with the “influencers” can also be worked through digital and physical marketing. A famous case happened during the Big Brother Brasil 2020 program: the participant Bianca Andrade, known as Boca Rosa, scheduled her social media posts in parallel with the program. On the day with the highest audience, she separated her clothes and accessories in a monochromatic way and, on the same day, the makeup products she was using were released on her social media, along with the colors of her clothes and accessories. With this strategy, she left the program earning from her makeup products an amount greater than the program’s prize.
In this case, the content generated by these influencers can also be boosted on social media, becoming even more powerful, since their profiles are already inserted within the niche.
Organic content
The organic content (which appears in internet searches spontaneously and unpaid) is essential for any brand, regardless of the company’s area or size. It can be informative content or engagement content – which encourages followers to interact with the publication. This type of content sustains the brand’s positioning and promotes an approach to the target audience, bringing a feeling of humanization to those who see it, as if a close friend were posting on their social media.
Paid ads boost sales if planned and operated in conjunction with a strategy of organic posts. Organic posts can, for example, follow the style of “trends”, the famous platform trends, using videos or content and then use them as ads.
App ads, on the other hand, can vary in format according to the campaign objective. The simplest is usually used to boost downloads, so that the image or video generates enough interest to motivate the user to enter Google Play – on the Android system – or the Apple Store – in the case of the IOS system. For apps with a subscription option, there is a campaign aimed at increasing the number of subscriptions.
Both the download boost campaign and the plan subscription campaign can be carried out for the main smartphone operating systems: Android and iOS. Furthermore, it is possible to run the campaign on various platforms, the main ones being Google Ads and Meta Ads. It is worth remembering that, on the Google Ads platform, it is only possible to run a campaign targeted for plan subscriptions if the application has at least 250,000 downloads.
Driving, not sustaining
In campaigns made for apps, ads help reach the target audience. They distribute images or videos as a form of advertising on social networks or partner apps, increasing the possibility of the user making a download or an in-app purchase. Brand sustainability, however, must be built around the product itself. The quality of what is being offered is what will guarantee a good reputation and a good relationship with the customer.
At first, the product may even become known and desired by the public, reaching the famous “hype”, but after this wave of desire, the probability of the product falling into oblivion is very high if it does not offer any innovation. In Brazil, food products such as Mexican popsicles or “frozen” yogurt no longer sell today as they did 10 years ago.
Advertisements can improve the number of sales. They assist in delivering content to the target audience, but they are not the only ones that increase sales. For this to happen, a set of actions is necessary, not an isolated action. This requires the research and analysis of the entire situation. Is the product outdated? Is the target audience correct? Is the price consistent? What is the behavior of competitors? Several factors will determine whether the sales strategy is correct or not for the objective.
Ideal strategy
Firstly, it is necessary to understand who is part of the target audience and what their characteristics are: which social network they usually use, what type of content they usually consume, and to which region they belong. Furthermore, the study of competitors is also interesting, whether for price research, prospecting for new tools or features for the product. Alignment with the development team is crucial, as this information can be applied to new updates, improving usability and likely culminating in an increase in sales.
For the promotion itself, the ideal is to merge organic and paid methods. That is, to have a certain frequency of posts on social media, but also to direct them to people who are not followers, so that they get to know the brand and the product. In addition to social media ads, it is interesting for the brand to have an official website where it provides important information for customers and through which it drives sales through Google Ads campaigns, to improve the ranking of searches.
This content was produced by:
Letícia Yamauchi
Marketing specialist from the MBA USP/Esalq, responsible for product marketing at Skylar, a technology and subtitling “startup” that is part of Pecege’s initiatives. Coordinates the strategies and positioning of the brand’s subtitling products.
Who wrote this column
Skylar
