With hundreds of millions of active social media users across the United States, it’s no wonder why more and more brands and businesses are implementing digital marketing strategies to effectively reach and engage their target audience online.
According to social media management company Lyfe Marketing, digital marketing has been proven to be the most cost-effective way to reach potential customers. Digital marketing has the potential to transform the way a brand reaches and engages with their audience. At a time when the average person spends a lot of their free time online, it makes sense to reach them where they are now native to— online.
What is native advertising?
Marketing experts go back and forth about what exactly native advertising covers— does it include sponsored posts? How about promoted content? CopyBlogger.com claims it’s paid content that “matches a publication’s editorial standard while meeting the audience’s expectations” (Farnworth, 2021).
As far as Twitter and Facebook, this can include user-generated content that brands pay to re-share. The keyword here being “re-share” because the ad isn’t pretending to be publisher-produced editorial content. When an advertiser is paying to simply be placed in front of an audience, that’s just regular advertising.
But in 2021 when social media is essentially everybody’s source of news, entertainment and television, one can argue that sponsored posts on Facebook and Instagram, as well as promoted tweets are native because it appears on a person’s social stream and even among search listings.
So, in the world of modern advertising, promoted content can be classified as an advertisement.
How do native ads work?
In its most basic form, native ads look like regular content sprinkled across a user’s social media platforms, but here’s the kick: there’s an actionable goal for the advertiser or brand.
With the way cookies (small pieces of data stored on your computer by the websites you visit) work, this means that the ad experience is different for each person because it’s tailored for that specific user. The difference between a native ad and a flagrant ad is the native one looks like it goes there and the latter can be seen as disruptive because it doesn’t look like it belongs with the rest of your feed.
Once you start to see examples of really good native ads, however, it’s easier to understand why a brand or company would want to choose this route, especially now in the Digital Age.
Examples of Native Ads
There are dozens of different types of native ads, including but not limited to sponsored and branded content, product placement, in-feed ads, promoted tweets, Google text ads and online video ads. Each one preys on the user from a different angle.
Sponsored content is what a creator posts and then a brand pays for. There isn’t necessarily a call to action, so this works more as brand awareness. The difference between sponsored and branded content is that for the latter, the brand is the one that creates the content for the publisher.
The goal of in-feed ads are to drive the user to another website. A well-known example is the ever-so-popular “This [insert scam of choice] will instantly burn your belly fat-” type posts.
Sponsored Facebook and Instagram posts are pretty self-explanatory, as are promoted tweets.
Regardless of the type, the goal of native advertising is to intentionally attract a customer and further spread awareness for their brand.
Brands and their consumers
With native ads in mind, is there a discernible impact in the way brands interact with consumers? Findings show that there is a significant relationship between informativeness and social media advertising value.
“This positive value will favorably affect consumers’ attitude toward social media advertising and their behavioral responses. The moderator effect of corporate reputation was also confirmed in this relationship (Hamouda, 2018).”
The way users and consumers see the brands that appear among their feed makes a difference. If it’s not something they care about, it’s easy to keep scrolling through. If the consumer does care about the brand or product, however, they don’t want to see a post that screams “ad,” but rather something that appeals to them in a casual way.
In a journal titled “When I feel invaded, I will avoid it: The effect of advertising invasiveness on consumers’ avoidance of social media advertising,” the authors describe how important it is for consumers to be receptive to social media advertising.
“Data was collected from Chinese consumers, and the results show that space invasiveness had a stronger effect than attention invasiveness did on advertising irritation, and that irritation in turn led to advertising avoidance (Niu et al., 2021).
They go on to argue that psychological ownership moderated the relationship between social influence and space invasiveness and that practitioners should follow certain guidelines to lessen advertising avoidance on different social media platforms.
Brand identity
Brands, companies and organizations all have a story to tell and their narrative can be presented through different types of branding. This can include the colors they pick, the font that becomes theirs, the logo they create, the images they choose to share and the tone they’re going to carry. What all this eventually becomes is their identity. But how can they make their online presence remain compelling? By keeping their target audience interested in what they have to say. Brands can do this by creating visually appealing posts and websites that draw traffic and engagement. Graphic designers and web masters do this by using techniques like the gestalt principles, text psychology and color theory.
“Internet users decide within seconds, whether to elaborate on a website, or to go on to a new page… Thus, Gestalt principles and realistic visualization should be implemented in web design to intensify interaction with the user (Möller et al., 2012).”
Emotional design
Emotional design is the idea that you can use emotions to either create loyalty or to drive a customer to take action. This can be done using various tactics.
Gestalt theory, for instance, includes basic principles of visual perception, which have become invaluable tools for designers. Some of the most popular principles found on websites include: Simplicity (how your mind perceives things in their simplest form), Figure-Ground (objects are perceived as either the figure or the ground) and Proximity/Grouping (elements that are closer together appear to be part of the same group, and vice-versa).
Color theory is the collection of guidelines that designers use to communicate through appealing color schemes. It’s important across websites because each color is connected to a meaning, which is necessary for how a brand wants their consumers to feel.
Typography is important because like each color, they each have the power to make the reader feel something. Whether it’s a serif or script font, the type used on a design can make it look modern, clean, loud or traditional and therefore has the ability to make the end-user feel a certain way.
All of these factors determine what makes a website look presentable. It may look like simple formulas to follow, but it also puts a lot of the pressure on designers. They have the ability to influence a person’s actions and perceptions by figuring out what drives their motivations. This can go both ways, however. It can be marketing and advertising at its best, or at its worst.
The power of social media marketing
How a brand chooses to promote their identity generally falls under the decision of marketing experts or public relations specialists. But, in 2021, an important addition has been added to the mix: the social media manager.
Nowadays, the way a brand is perceived online is instrumental to the success they’re going to have— whether they’re for profit or not. The role of the social media manager is to not only help promote the company to the public, but to create positive brand awareness that results in effective online engagement.
In a journal titled “Online customer engagement: Creating social environments through brand community constellations,” the authors found the importance of positioning the brand community as part of a social environment. “To strengthen customer-brand relationships, marketers should focus on community members’ multiple memberships,” the study reads.
An example of a positive marketing website is Dropbox. Most everyone has probably received an email or two— or 100— about the account almost running out of space, which is mostly where a person’s knowledge of the brand comes from. But the company’s homepage does a good job of marketing itself in a clean way. The user’s eye is drawn to its call to actions, the copy is very simple and its navigation is pretty stripped down.
This website is easy on the eye because of its color choices and font. It follows the gestalt principles of closure, proximity and enclosure, but the designer’s choice of colors and theme were done with the purpose of informing, then hooking the user with its call to actions. It’s still marketing itself, but not loudly.
An example of loud marketing is the retail website Shein. When visiting the site, users are bombarded with about 10 discount ads right off the bat. One may think that zero thought went into the design, but their goal was not to amaze viewers with a beautiful site filled with the latest fashion, but rather to get customers to buy as much as they can for cheap.
The site still follows Gestalt Principles such as enclosure and proximity, but perhaps the most used principle is closure as the discount ads take up a large portion of the website. Its bright colors can indicate warmth and the summer season, but they are all secondary colors stacked on one another, making the copy hard to read.
Targeting Gen Z on social media
Popular with Gen Z-ers, Shein does a lot of sponsored content and advertising on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok to get users to its site. They can be placed in the native ad category because the sponsored and promoted posts appear in a user’s social stream as well as among search listings as though they belong with everything else.
While not appealing to anyone who knows any better, Shein is very strong in its advertising and targeting game, checking off nearly all 12 examples of native ads listed on CopyBlogger.com. Among the types it uses are online video ads, sponsored and branded content, in-feed ads, and Google text ads.
Brand advertisement for this site is so huge, Google Ads conducted an experiment about it in 2019. In the experiment, titled “How SHEIN drove sales and brand interest with online video ads,” they found that by serving display and action ads at the same time, SHEIN drove 5 percent in incremental sales.
The brand’s success can be largely credited to its internet-viral social media strategy, which has appeared in countless clothing haul videos on TikTok and YouTube, mostly targeting Gen Z. On TikTok alone, #Shein has garnered 6.2 billion views. On Instagram, Shein’s 10 verified accounts boast a total of nearly 30 million followers.
Finding an audience on Instagram
In the article, “A Complete Guide to Instagram Marketing,” author Ash Read says that with more than one billion Instagrammers worldwide, brands will be sure to reach them through Instagram. In the same article he states that social media has been proven to influence purchase decisions so it is essentially the marketer’s dream.
Success for brands on Instagram rely on elements such as:
- Clear vision and strategy
- Consistent frequency
- Audience awareness; and
- Clear visual style
Shein is an example of a brand that locked down these components on social media, delivering big results for their business.
Author Elisabet Parera goes into this further in the article “10 types of visual content you must include in your social media strategies.” The first strategy she details is making the most of images. Because Shein is a retail clothing website, their Instagram posts consist of images of models wearing their merchandise.
The second strategy mentioned is video. Posts with videos are shared three times more than those that only have text. As stated previously, Shein was able to maximize their reach through their video advertisement by producing quick and simple video content that is easy to cross-share across social media. The company also used social media influencers to further advertise online by cross-sharing their clothing hauls.
The images, logos, photos and designs used to promote a business help create a visual brand. Though not always visually appealing, Shein locked down its Gen Z audience and continues to tap into social media to bring in their revenue. In essence, the brand uses social media marketing to drive their interest through advertising.
Though a key player in the game, Shein is not the only company going hard on digital ads. A 2017 article on Forbes stated that digital advertising was expected to grow to an annual spend of more than $335 billion by the end of 2020. The industry is now at an all time high.
The wrap-up
The way a person sees things online plays into how what they think of a brand. This is why graphic designers and social media managers continue to master visual storytelling and why it’s important for companies to understand their significance and support their work, which will therefore support the overall brand.
There is no doubt that digital advertising can lead to higher levels of engagement and interaction. Whether to drive web traffic or social media, digital marketing strategies help create awareness and transform leads into customers.
The use of the internet and social media has changed consumer behavior and the ways in which companies conduct business. The images, videos, logos and designs shared online to promote a business help create their visual brand. Now more than ever, brands are using social media marketing to drive their interest through advertising, which will continue to be seen by all users— whether they want to or not.
References:
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Ads, G. (2019, October). Experiment: How SHEIN drove sales and brand interest with online video ads. Google. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-apac/marketing-strategies/video/experiment-how-shein-drove-sales-and-brand-interest-online-video-ads/.
Bargeron, S. (2021, April 9). How China’s Shein Conquered Global Social Media. Jing Daily. https://jingdaily.com/how-chinas-shein-conquered-global-social-media/.
Bonner, C. (2019, March 23). Using Gestalt Principles for Natural Interactions. thoughtbot. https://thoughtbot.com/blog/gestalt-principles. (Module 2)
Farnworth, D. (2021, January 4). Native Advertising: A Lively Introduction. Copyblogger. https://copyblogger.com/examples-of-native-ads/. (Module 5)
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Möller, B., Brezing, C., & Unz, D. (2012). What should a corporate website look like? The influence of Gestalt principles and visualisation in website design on the degree of acceptance and recommendation. Behaviour & Information Technology, 31(7), 739–751. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2011.642893
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