Author: Coegi

Why Short-Form Video is Critical for Your Brand’s Success

Posted on by Coegi

 

Short-form video marketing is becoming increasingly important for brands to reach consumers. Online video consumption has been growing steadily year over year. In fact, the average person spends over 100 minutes per day watching online videos.

Short-form videos are what consumers want to watch – whether on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, or Snapchat Spotlight. The social media giants know this and have shifted their algorithms to prioritize users who utilize these features.

Keep in mind – each social media platform has different placement options and nuances. One video asset copied and pasted on every channel will likely be ineffective.

Find Your Hook

Whether you’re using display video or paid social media, short-form video increasingly wins the day. One study found that attention spans last an average of eight seconds, so getting your brand and message across in an “elevator pitch” increasingly is becoming the norm. 73% of people want to see “entertaining” videos on social media so your content needs to hook consumers immediately.

Gain Authentic Engagement with User-Generated Video Content

Consumers are exposed to over 5,000 ads daily. User-generated content has become crucial to break through the noisy digital landscape. One study found that 75% of consumers don’t accept advertisements as truth, but that 70% do trust other consumer’s opinions. Utilizing user-generated video content for organic or paid social media will help your brand become authentic and approachable to consumers.

GoPro does a great job of using video as a part of their marketing strategy. They use each social media platform for a different purpose, catering to the audience by placement. GoPro shares UGC photos and videos on Instagram, tutorials on YouTube, product announcements on Twitter, and connects with users on Facebook.

Short-Form Video Drives Full Funnel Results

Video is more than an awareness tactic for paid social media efforts. It is crucial to include video at all stages of the marketing funnel. Animoto surveyed 580 consumers, 93% of which said video is helpful when purchasing a product while 71% have purchased a product or service after watching a brand’s video on social media.

One study shows six-second awareness ads are just as effective as a 15-second video for a mid-funnel strategy. Another study found that 25% of TikTok users purchase or research a product after watching TikTok and 92% of users take action, e.g. liking/commenting, sharing, following, or purchasing. Video is now a full-funnel play and a necessary investment to build ROI.

View our Video Marketing Trends and Best Practices here for more tips!

How to Make Brand-Agency Relationships Last

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Account Strategy Director, Danielle Wesolowski, discusses how to improve brand-agency relationships by putting client needs first through a strategy centered on togetherness and collaboration.

Brands, have you ever felt the frustration of receiving a media plan or creative from an agency that was completely different from what you had envisioned?

Agencies, have you ever hung up a client call feeling completely blind-sided about the direction and expectations for your campaign?

Misalignment between brand and agency teams can quickly build into frustration. How can we avoid the missteps that build tension between agency and brand teams and minimize the resulting efficiency losses? The work must start within teams. Then you can develop clear brand-agency collaboration to support strong marketing strategies and positive working relationships.

Coegi has an internal framework surrounding everything we do called the Coegi Way. There are four pillars: attitude, approach, service and culture. Looking through this lens, let’s explore how to build successful brand-agency relationships.

Attitude: The Sky’s the Limit

When initiating a new brand-agency partnership, or just a new campaign, start your process with an open mind. Take time to collaboratively brainstorm with each other – considering out of the box options. Sometimes we become so process-oriented we lose sight of the opportunities in front of us.

Add regular brainstorms into your process to audit competition, evaluate future opportunities, and find new ways to leverage existing capabilities. The goal is to “put yourself in a position with clarity of mind to execute at high levels of efficiency, innovation, and real creativity”.  Delight your client by reimagining possibilities for their brand.

Thought starters for impactful brainstorming: 

  • What are those things we would do if we could just remove the barriers?
  • What’s keeping us from incredible innovation, real creativity, and surpassing client expectations–or our own expectations?

Approach: Empower and Align Teams

Approach your collaborative marketing strategy like a chess board: assess the field of play and then implement your strategy. Both brands and agencies must enable their teams to do great work. To enable means giving people the power to take action, but also giving strength and confidence.

While strong teams value individual contributors, they must work together cohesively as a unit to win. Each person on your team should be providing the same experience to the client no matter who they talk to. If a different answer is given depending on who you ask – the team needs to be realigned. The same goes for in-house marketing teams and executives. If the CMO approves a campaign but the CEO enters the conversation and last minute vetoes key creatives or channels, this can cause major issues. Internal teams must be empowered to make decisions while understanding overall goals before they can effectively work with external partners.

Service: Understand the Client’s Needs

Agencies build lasting and trusting relationships with brands when they demonstrate a strong understanding of the client’s needs and provide tactical plans to act on those needs and deliver impactful solutions. The expectation we set for account team members at Coegi is, 

“An individual should be able to demonstrate a full understanding of their clients’ business needs and translate this knowledge into an actionable cadence of strategic and tactical plans leveraging the strengths of integrated digital communication channels to deliver consistent, differentiated and valued customer experiences.” 

This is crucial because 30% of marketing professionals surveyed believe not understanding their brand completely is the top barrier to successful brand-agency relationships, according to eMarketer.

We often take client requests and run with them. This is especially true in performance media, where campaign activation is agile and ever-evolving. When possible, facilitate more discussions before the tactical phase. Really understand client goals first and define the best way to reach those together. For example, when a client gives you a specific target audience, talk through the justification for that audience. Also, explore other potential options, and ensure their plan is optimized to reach their goals and aligned with your capabilities.

Culture: Meet Clients Where They are Comfortable

Translate your culture as an agency or team to your client. Find ways to connect with brand teams to allow both cultures to play off each other. Open the right communication channels to make your client comfortable whether it be group Zooms, 1:1 calls, or short emails.

Keith Schwartz, CEO of Bounteous, quotes, “It’s really about forming a partnership where you can leverage the best of both organizations. Mature business leaders understand that having a partner with knowledge capital about their industry creates a lot of value.”

A MediaCause article issues a warning, “ if you don’t establish a partner relationship from the start, you’ll more than likely forever be treated as a vendor.”

Never underestimate the importance of relationship building to gain trust with your client. Go beyond that vendor relationship to become a true partner. Give them space to talk candidly about problems, ideas, and goals. Provide honest feedback to each other. You can gain so much more from the client if you create these open communication opportunities.

To sum everything up, my advice is simply this: slow down and focus on collaboration.

3 Questions to Start Improving Your Brand-Agency Relationships:

  1. Where do you find the biggest challenges in understanding client needs?
  2. What are the biggest barriers to developing strong and trustworthy client relationships?
  3. What would you like to do differently to enhance those relationships?

If you’re interested in exploring a partnership with Coegi, contact us today to schedule a discovery call.

Coegi Recognized as One of Adweek’s Fastest Growing Agencies

Posted on by Coegi

We are incredibly honored to announce that Coegi was ranked one of Adweek’s top 75 fastest growing agencies in the US and around the world for two years in a row. After the uncertainty of the past few years due to the ongoing pandemic, this recognition is especially meaningful for us. We know it was difficult for many to see growth in such an unpredictable market and changing workplace environments, but we are proud to see that the dedication of our staff and data partners allowed us to continue to support and lift up our clients. Coegi’s strong culture made up of hard-working, passionate individuals allowed us to learn, grow and ultimately thrive as an organization during one of the most unpredictable years in history.

Our President, Sean Cotton, shares his thoughts on why Coegi was able to still grow during this time and what it means for our staff and our clients to be one of the fastest growing agencies.

What Makes Coegi a Great Place to Work

Posted on by Coegi

The coronavirus pandemic permanently altered the workforce and workplace. Many people lost their jobs or suddenly had double the workload to complete during the same 40-hour workweek. There is an entire niche of TikTok where users share their frustrations working in corporate America during the pandemic.

In previous roles, some of my hardest working coworkers became burned out due to the culture and lack of support from leadership, leading to high turnover. The experience at Coegi is a refreshing change from that high-stress environment and is truly a great place to work.

Coegi came into my life during a time when my anxiety levels were at an all-time high. From the first interaction, I could tell that this company was different. I had three levels of interviews and I could tell the employees genuinely enjoyed their work. The last interview was with Sean Cotton, our president, who took the time to get to know me and explain Coegi’s culture.

When I started with Coegi, I spent the first two weeks learning all about the company. Through various training modules, I learned about its employees, social media, programmatic media, and how everything works together. I was given ample hands-on training to help fill my gaps in professional knowledge and be set up for success.

The first part of Coegi’s manifesto states: “We believe in the household names, and the ones who are on their way. The ones grinding, defining and refining their worlds. The ones who know that growth requires purposeful innovation, strategic activation, and a media team they can believe in.” Every single employee believes and lives this out daily. Everyone who works at Coegi genuinely loves what they do. We make it a priority to be on the cutting edge of social and programmatic advertising. We gain certifications in platforms like Facebook, The Trade Desk, and Google Analytics to grow our careers and capabilities.

Coegi and its leadership understand that its employees are the company’s heart and soul. Beyond creating a positive work environment, there are many initiatives to improve employee morale that even the leaders participate in. These include a biweekly book club, mentoring program, weekly company-wide lunch trainings, legitimately fun outings, yearly retreats, and more. Many companies required employees to be fully in-office as soon as it was allowed. Coegi hits a happy medium by providing the flexibility to both work remotely and come to the office for collaboration.

There are many reasons why Coegi is a great place to work. But the bottom line is that the leadership team supports and trusts its employees. If you’re a marketer looking for a place to work, come join our team!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKko0_gG4Wk&feature=youtu.be

Connected TV: A New Frontier for Targeted Healthcare Marketing

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Why is CTV a must-have for healthcare marketing?

In the ever-evolving world of digital advertising, marketers are constantly looking for the next opportunity and channel. Connected TV, in particular, is quickly gaining traction with a an increase in spending from $7.2B in 2021 to $9.39B in 2022. Here are a few reasons why:

  • Incremental reach
  • Segmentation & targeting
  • Positive consumer experience
  • Cost efficiency
  • High consumer engagement
  • Proven ROI & measurable outcomes 

Large entertainment and retail brands have been quick to implement CTV into their marketing plans. However, the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors have been slower to adopt. This leaves a huge opportunity for brands to pave the way in an unsaturated and underutilized space. 

Reach Niche Healthcare Segments

Traditionally, linear TV has been a core method used to reach broad healthcare audiences, often with a “spray and pray” approach. By using 3rd-party data partners, such as PulsePoint, advertisers can identify highly specific and reliable healthcare patient and provider audiences while maintaining HIPAA compliance. One to one consumer matching is overlaid on top of CTV buys driving campaigns directly to the core audience. For niche consumer demographics, this audience-first approach reaches high-value, addressable segments without overspending on mass media buys.  The content relevancy then enhances the user experience by serving relevant content in an engaging, large screen format.

Build Incremental Reach Across Media Channels

High quality video content is the memorable media to engage pharmaceutical audiences. However, consumers are fragmented across various screens and platforms. Programmatic CTV allows health and pharma brands to reach audiences across channels, staying top of mind and driving incremental reach. CTV bundled with linear TV and other digital programmatic buys work together to reach unique audiences as well as meet consumers across channels in a non-invasive way. Cross-channel integration platforms, such as The Trade Desk, can ensure you are reaching the right audience with the appropriate frequency, avoiding any siloes or ad fatigue. 

You can read our CTV Advertising Best Practices Q&A with The Trade Desk here.

Drive Health-Focused Outcomes with Measurable Results 

At Coegi, data is the core of what we do. CTV brings that data-driven aspect to the former wild, wild west of television advertising. One of our subject matter experts in the healthcare and pharma space, Colin Duft, stated, “CTV for healthcare marketing is an untapped space eliminating barriers from a cost to market perspective. TV is now an accessible market for pharmaceutical players.”  With CTV measurement capabilities, advertisers can now validate this channel and pull detailed insights on campaign impacts. There is a greater ability to connect TV campaign results to business goals and outcomes. 

HIPAA Compliant Targeting & Consumer Trust

Healthcare advertisers are often deterred by privacy laws and concerns when it comes to targeting individuals or sensitive patient sectors. However, consumers are becoming more open and are even expecting personalization from brands. A recent study showed that after direct mail, TV and radio ads are the most highly trusted media formats for advertising.  A TV ad for a specific health condition can feel less invasive, yet still applicable and relevant.  With third-party data partners, personal information is de-identified for HIPAA compliant targeting. As an additional resource, the NAI provides this healthcare targeting guide to help determine whether targeting efforts or data segments are considered sensitive.

Implications for Healthcare Brands

  • The time is now for CTV 
    • This is an opportune time for health-focused brands to capitalize on the CTV space. Users are cutting the cord, building an increasing demographic of users only reachable through streaming TV.
  • Precision buying optimizes TV ad budgets
    • Replace bulk linear buys with efficiently targeted ad placements.
  • Measurable results empower brands
    • Gather advanced demographic information and data from CTV ads to optimize campaigns, creatives, and audience sectors.

View our full healthcare marketing guide to learn more.

Download Coegi’s Healthcare Marketing Guide

Brand vs Performance Marketing

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As marketers, we often preach about setting separate KPIs for campaigns in different funnel stages. We are comparing brand vs performance marketing depending on campaign goals. While this is needed, we must understand the synergies between the two to fully optimize campaigns.

At Coegi, we define ourselves as performance marketing practitioners. Does this mean we ignore branding and top funnel efforts? Of course not. We believe that all marketing efforts can ladder up to business goals.

What’s the Difference Between Brand vs Performance Marketing?

A Forbes article explains, “Brand marketing encourages customers to raise their hands. Performance marketing makes it as easy as possible for a customer to get your product into their hand after they raise it.” Branded campaigns are structured to build brand affinity, recall, values, and other emotion-based results.

Performance marketing, conversely, is all about the numbers. Finding ways to build efficiencies and grow total results. These measurement-focused campaigns are built to drive conversions, leads, purchases, and purposeful clicks. All while lowering the cost per action based on channel, audience, and creative learnings.

How To Hold Brand Campaigns Accountable

Marketers that have historically leaned on traditional channels are shifting to digital platforms to have a more targeted approach. However, brand campaign dollars are generally not held accountable like performance dollars. Yet, there is an increasing demand from CFOs and CEOs for those quantifiable results and clear ROI.

A marketer’s job is to showcase the value of upper funnel marketing on long and short term business results. For example, a McKinsey study reported, “With a clearer understanding of consumer preferences and behavior at the early stages of their buying journey, companies report marketing efficiency gains of up to 30% and incremental top-line growth of up to 10% without increasing the marketing budget.”

Measuring Branding Campaign Results

How can you start to measure brand campaigns? Identify business objectives towards awareness that indicate a positive sentiment towards or engagement with your product. Ask the right questions, determine the right methodology, and understand what actions are truly driving interest in your brand.

Taking Full-Funnel Full-Circle

A MarketingProfs article explained this by saying, “brand-driven insight is your truth—the WHY behind all that you do. The performance marketing is your plan put into action—the HOW and WHAT of manifesting that truth.” By understanding this full customer journey, brands can make audiences feel understood. This is accomplished through using data-driven insights to build meaningful messaging on the channels where they are most present and receptive. Ultimately, this builds trust while optimizing budgets simply by being relevant to your core audience. This sets the stage for lower funnel campaigns and creates a more seamless path to conversion.

Coegi built a full-funnel marketing campaign to increase emotional brand connection and drive product trials for  a CPG client. We executed a performance branding study on Facebook to evaluate brand lift and conversion lift for key website events. This blended approach allowed for valuable insights into multiple stages of the consumer journey, from awareness to purchase intent. The results surpassed various CPG benchmarks and highlighted the importance of creating synergies between creative execution and operational strategy. It also placed more accountability on the incrementality of our branding efforts.

Key Takeaways

  • Treat all marketing campaigns as performance-based
  • Hold brand campaigns accountable with custom measurement frameworks that then inform business outcomes
  • Pull insights from bottom funnel campaigns to inform top funnel campaigns (and vice versa)

For more, read Boost Customer Lifetime Value with Awareness Marketing.

Balancing the Art and Science of Advertising

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Advertising may elicit thoughts of uniquely designed print ads and Super Bowl commercials; the output of creative minds with the ability to persuade consumer decisions. For some people, advertising seems to be a strictly artistic discipline when all one sees is the final creative product. In truth, the art and science of advertising must blend together in order to maximize marketing campaign results. 

“The solution to capturing consumers comes down to a sophisticated blend of art and science.”

– Paul Robson, President International at Adobe

On one end of the spectrum we have science, the known and the unknown, for the analytical and curious minds looking to uncover unique insights and trends. At the other end lies art, a subjective and ever-changing expression of unique thoughts and imagination in which there is truly never a right or wrong. There are a variety of perspectives on what the core of advertising is, when realistically both science and art’s synergy are central to achieving sustainable, successful strategy and activation. 

Why you need both art and science to build a brand

With art highly visible and science working behind the scenes, both pillars are critical to build the brand foundation. Our President, Sean Cotton, recently said that data is best used as a guide to craft engaging campaigns inspired by the numbers, keeping creative at the forefront while ensuring it is impactful with analytics. Sometimes this synergy is simple when you are working with a full-service agency. But, it is often more effective to work with separate creative and performance media agencies. As long as both sides communicate and prioritize business outcomes, the brand is set up for success.

How to optimize creative with data insights

At Coegi, we are the science fueling the art. We dig deeper into the what’s, why’s, and how’s of digital media through robust data analysis and industry research. The basis for our campaigns is research and analysis of our brands’ audiences. Then, we rely on machine learning and human intuition to optimize.

However, when it comes to strategy, it all really starts with the measurement framework.  This ensures we can understand if the research and thinking we put into action is actually impacting the brand’s bottom line. As a result, this process is not completely devoid of art. In fact, around 75% of an ad’s impact can be attributed to quality creative.

However, great creative pieces need data-driven insights to be delivered effectively. Our teams have to get creative with how and where we reach audiences to make the greatest impact. By doing so, we can better deliver solutions that make the art work harder, thus building up ROI. In essence, our strategy is our art.

Collaboration is key to success

At the end of the day, effective collaboration is at the core of the art and science of performance advertising. Communication and transparency between departments and our partners offers balance, allowing for seamless work processes and better results for clients. When this is done well, the lines between art and science begin to blur – proving that advertising isn’t black and white. It’s the molding of colors as the science and art of an agency work together to create a balanced composition paving the way for brand growth.

“The purpose of marketing is to influence the behaviors of others to bring them closer to your brand, organization, product, or service. The best way to achieve it is to strike a balance between the hard data and evidence that support the best path to take, and the human appeal and creative approach necessary to solidify its impact.”

– Eminent SEO CEO, Jenny Stradling

 

 

Best Practices for Targeting in Pharmaceutical Campaigns

Posted on by Coegi

Who makes the rules?

In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without consent. When it comes to understanding HIPAA for uses of health information for advertising, there’s lots of room for interpretation leaving advertisers unsure if certain marketing capabilities are compliant and ethical. This especially holds true for pharmaceutical advertisers using health information to target audiences for prescription drugs, medical devices and other pharmaceutical brands through media. To provide an industry standard and best practices, there are committees devoted to providing this direction to advertisers like the National Advertising Initiative (NAI), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) and others. 

One of the leading bodies in defining the regulations for digital advertising is the NAI. Founded in 2000, the NAI published a set of code for advertisers to abide by that is supported by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The most recent revisions to the code enables advertisers to reference media targeting best practices according to the NAI, including a definition for Sensitive Health Information to provide pharmaceutical advertisers with more concrete direction.

How do regulations affect healthcare targeting?

The first step is to understand if the brand falls under the ‘sensitive’ category. This will impact targeting capabilities. According to the NAI, there are two subsets of sensitive information: 

  1. Data about a health condition or treatment derived from a sensitive source 
  2. Data about certain sensitive conditions regardless of the source of the data

Determining whether a health condition is considered ‘sensitive’ is unclear in the industry. The NAI only provides a few sensitive categories. These include drug addiction, STDs, mental health, pregnancy termination, and all conditions predominantly affecting children not treated by OTC and Cancer.

There are resources to help guide the analysis of determining whether the brand falls into the sensitive category. The NAI provides guidance to help determine whether pharmaceutical targeting segments are considered sensitive.

However, this guidance does not give advertisers a clear list of the targeting capabilities that are compliant. Coegi recommends using this guide to drive direct conversations with the client. It is useful to create a mutual agreement on whether the brand falls into either the sensitive category to influence compliant targeting solutions. 

There is no clear list provided by any regulatory source. So, Coegi recommends working with the client to align on the brand’s definition of sensitivity. This will greatly affect compliant targeting capabilities. 

The Trade Desk (a NAI member) also takes precautions and has a healthcare targeting policy. Because there is no official list deeming health conditions sensitive or non-sensitive, TTD has its own process. It defines whether a condition is deemed high, medium or low in the sensitive category  to then determine permitted targeting capabilities. This policy uses a multi-factor analysis to take into account many considerations when calculating each condition’s category. 

Other advertising platforms have similar protocols for brands in the healthcare space. Before running paid ads through Facebook, advertisers must gain permission according to its Promotion of Prescription Drugs policy.

How to Approach Pharmaceutical Targeting Compliantly

Once you determine whether the target is in the sensitive or non-sensitive condition category, use these tactics to target consumers: 

Healthcare Consumer Targeting:

Behavioral Targeting

  • This form of targeting is typically not a compliant way to reach a consumer given it’s ‘data about a health condition or treatment’. However, there are third party data providers who use de-identified information. This is compliant according to the NAI. 
  • It is critical to understand how any third party data is being collected if used to reach patients. Coegi does a detailed analysis to determine whether a data provider is compliant according to industry best practices. 

Contextual Targeting

  • There are no known regulations for using contextual targeting for a consumer audience. This is a popular approach in reaching a patient and caregiver audience in a compliant manner. 

Geotargeting

  • For both sensitive and non-sensitive conditions, geotargeting a consumer audience is not compliant. According to the NAI, unless the user’s opt-in consent is given to target by precise location data (like an HCP’s office), this falls outside of best practice.  
  • While precise location data requires opt-in, other forms of targeting that can reach a patient audience using geographic data. This data needs to be further vetted to ensure it’s not precise location data. 

Retargeting  

  • According to the 2020 code, retargeting is a form of Tailored Advertising. Sensitive health segments require opt-in consent in order to retarget a consumer audience. 
  • Even for non-sensitive health segments, Coegi recommends having a conversation with the brand team to gain alignment prior to execution.

Healthcare Provider Targeting

Because you’re targeting by profession, there are fewer restrictions for HCPs. ID-based targeting allows pharmaceutical brands to reach HCPs with a compliant audience-first approach.

Various forms of audience targeting for HCPs can include: 

  • Dx Targeting – ICD-10 code for specific diagnosis 
  • Rx Targeting – prescription code for specific drugs  
  • Specialty Targeting – target HCPs by specific medical specialty
  • List Match Targeting – target HCPs by specific NPI number

Depending on a particular client’s goals, Coegi will provide a recommended targeting strategy to reach a HCP audience 

Even with less restrictions, we recommends investigating and understanding the source of the data segments associated with NPIs. We have a conversation with the brand team to gain alignment on certain targeting efforts, especially retargeting.

Interested in learning more about pharmaceutical targeting marketing best practices? View our white paper to learn more on targeting patients and providers with best-in-class digital tactics.

The Do’s and Don’ts of TikTok Advertising

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As new social media platforms roll into our day to day lives, it is important to understand their marketing powers and which audiences fit best with your brand. TikTok is the newest social media platform that has really captured the attention of individuals globally. Tiktok advertising popularity has accelerated within the past couple of years. Brands want the opportunity to present their brand on a platform.

The TikTok opportunity

TikTok has reached a total lifetime user spending of $2.5B globally, has about 1 billion monthly active users since February 2021, and an engagement rate of 18% – higher than any other social platform.  It provides a huge opportunity for brands to not only introduce their brand but drive incremental conversions.

We know TikTok for its authentic, personalized, funny, and relatable content. Many brands use this tactic to show their brand’s personality and connect with their customers on a more personal level. True, Millennials and their younger peers in Generation Z are tired of ads. In fact, many of them use ad blockers when they browse.

But since engagement on TikTok is so high, advertisers can promote consumer advocacy rather than pure marketing strategy. This way, “you build brand awareness with an audience that talks about you because they’re genuinely impressed.” Many brands are focusing on reaching younger demographics on TikTok. However, 53% are aged 30+ – leaving a large reach for brands not going for the typical Gen-Z audience. 

How to create successful TikTok advertising campaigns

TikTok is a place for authenticity and personality – differentiating from a majority of social platforms in which highly-produced and staged ads perform better. Brands should strive to make their advertising blend in on TikTok. Create a seamless user experience and minimize viewing disruption. The ad should not look like a typical ad seen on other platforms because it will be not resonate. However, if it uses trending audio, popular dances, or tells a funny story,  it is more likely to gain attention.

Here are some topics to utilize while creating ads for TikTok:

  1. Get comfortable with comedy – Find a way to show the personality of your brand through relatable funny content. This could be of your product/service or of your company culture. 
  2. Show how your brand can be a #lifehack – Your brand’s main goal is to make people’s lives easier, more efficient, and/or more enjoyable.  Find that #lifehack your brand offers, and present it to your audiences in a quick video story. Overall, this hashtag has 78.6B views – allowing for a huge increase in reach for your brand.
  3. Bust a move – People love to show off their dance moves on TikTok. Use dance to keep up with trends and utilize popular audio at the same time. One example of a powerful brand deal was the partnership of Charli D’Amelio and P&G #distancedance at the beginning of the pandemic, which generated over 8B views.
  4. Utilize trending audio – Audio is a necessity on TikTok for a high performing ad. 88% of TikTok users said that sound is essential to the TikTok experience, and ads with sound-on are 2.2x better at increasing brand awareness. Brands can amplify their voice by creating an original audio clip or utilizing existing trending audio. E.L.F. Cosmetics commissioned a song for their TikTok campaign “Eyes Lips Face” and collaborated with influencers to aid in the promotion. The #eyeslipsface hashtag has been used in over 9.4B videos created by TikTok users.
  5. Find Your Niche – TikTok’s powerful algorithm, which is based on videos users watched, liked or shared, allows users to be served content that is extremely relevant to them. Understanding and reaching niches on TikTok is a great way to get your content in front of high potential audiences. 
  6. Don’t Shy Away from Activism – TikTok is a very popular platform for spreading awareness on social issues.  According to Reach3Insights, nearly 77% of TikTok users say that the app has helped them learn more about social justice and politics. As an advertiser, it is important to be sensitive to the social issues on the platform. 

TikTok is a great platform to show your brand in a new authentic light. Create genuine ads that blend in with content users are already viewing. Because of this, it is important that advertisers remain up-to-date on the latest TikTok trends so they can advertise in a way that does not seem invasive or out of place.

Take some time to scroll through the For You Page. Find the niche audiences you are looking for. Then create ads that fit the trends.  As previously mentioned, when creating a TikTok ad, look out for trends in comedy, life hacks, dancing, social justice or audio – depending on your audience. A little effort to understand your audience’s interests can go a long way on TikTok. Finally, always keep in mind that authenticity and personality are key. 

Written By: Julia Read, Sr Social Media Specialist and Rachel Vibbert, Data Architect

Why Walled Gardens Will (and Won’t) Be More Critical in the Future

Posted on by Coegi

 

As we explore the world of cookieless digital advertising, marketers will be focusing much of their attention on walled gardens with valuable first-party data. However, even walled gardens have issues we will need to navigate through in order to achieve business goals which are tangible to the financial guardians of brands.

Most analysts predict that walled gardens (in particular Google) will be the safest place to conduct audience targeted buys in 2024.  Even while Google’s DSP allows marketers to buy a lot of inventory, it is currently more limited in audio, connected TV and DOOH inventory.  These are channels where context is probably more important than the precision of the audience and where there is likely going to be a need to diversify to other advertising platforms to achieve a successful omni-channel strategy.

Using Facebook User Data

Facebook does have robust behavioral data from signed-in users; however, iOS 15 makes it more challenging to perform audience-based buys and to attribute conversions.  Some of our early campaigns showed a 15x increase in CPA within the platform, but nearly no impact on actual sales.  This means that conversion data on the Facebook platform was (and is) solely directional for most advertisers. While good for the business, this might be more challenging for marketers trying to prove their marketing is “working.”

Should You Trust the Algorithm?

The big ad tech players, and thus some agencies, will likely advise brands to ‘trust the algorithm’ even more than they have in the past, as Google, Facebook and Amazon don’t give specialists a lot of control over or insights about many aspects of their buying decisions.  Facebook in particular makes it challenging to control frequency, and DV360’s lookalike modeling is very opaque.  Against a lack of accurate measurement across each walled garden, brands and their agencies need to develop more holistic, advanced measurement frameworks.

How Will Cookie Deprecation Affect CPMs?

While scale is impacted slightly outside of Google Chrome and Android apps, there are still ample opportunities to bid for inventory in these environments.  However, with fewer buying platforms to conduct audience-based buys and fewer impressions to scale against, CPMs will likely increase, in particular on video.  This might put pressure on agencies to ‘keep the costs down’, which in turn may increase traffic from bots and fraudulent inventory.  Brands need to expect an increase in CPMs while not incentivizing a decrease in inventory quality.

A Walled Garden SWOT Analysis

Strengths – Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple each have huge first-party data sets.  And not just in volume of users, they have robust metadata around each profile as well, from account information, purchase history and behavior.  Even if ID-based solutions grow in count, it’s possible we may not be able to append significant amounts of secondary data to each profile to be scalable for marketers.

Weaknesses – You will undoubtedly need adjustments in terms of attribution and measurement.  Even today, if you were to believe the metrics from each platform, nearly all of your automated marketing channels would have +ROI for the same purchase. Paid search, Facebook conversion ads and programmatic retargeting can’t all have a CPA of $10. They can’t produce 10,000 sales when you only sold 3,000 products. This is because each is taking credit for any time a user touches their ad. Because the walled gardens don’t share a common user profile, multi-touch attribution can be disjointed and inconsistent. It’s safe to say the methods of achieving measurement will have to change.

Opportunities – Lean into zero-, first- and second-party data in walled garden platforms, and rely less on retargeting. This allows for stronger prospecting and less reliance on audiences that were likely to “convert” anyway and, therefore, inflate marketing metrics.

Threats – Because many marketers and brands will be leaning into walled gardens, there will likely be an increase in advertising costs on these platforms. Budgets will need to increase to achieve the same scale as before.

So what does this mean?

At present, our suggestion is to lean into walled gardens for precise audience targeting. But, begin measuring success of your advertising program at a higher level.  Some examples of this include matched market tests, media mix modeling, and control vs. exposed methodologies.

Yes, this will make it more challenging to know which 50% of your marketing spend is effective. But, it’s the best solution with the reduction of transparency in algorithmic data and therefore less understanding of success from a conversion data standpoint.

This will also force marketers to start looking at the data as a whole. It’s time to get away from optimizing towards last-click and last-touch metrics. They have provided misleading signals for years.

Regarding measurement changes, advertising campaigns need to be set-up to reach business goals rather than just media metric KPIs.  To achieve this, individual channels and tactics will need to identify leading indicators to optimize toward.  Engagement rates, reach, completion rate, and measures of media effectiveness like CPM/CPC should become more of a focus rather than CPAs.

Check out our 5 Step Guide to Measuring Marketing ROI to get started:

Download Coegi’s Measurement Guide

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