There’s a new buzzword making waves across the digital sphere. If you haven’t been hiding under a rock, you’ll know that we’re talking about ‘native advertising’. As with many other catch-phrases, the majority of people using them have little idea as to their actual meaning. Luckily, we’re here to decipher this one for you. ‘Native advertising’ is essentially the online equivalent of an advertorial. It consist of paid or sponsored content that appears amongst genuine editorial content in an effort to seem more authentic or trustworthy.
As competition between brands heats up – online and off – we’re seeing more and more companies introduce native advertising into their website marketing.
Social media behemoth, Twitter, recently announced that it has acquired Namo Media, a company specialising in native advertising. Evidently, Twitter, as well as many other industry-leading digital brands, are in favour of the practice. However, when executed poorly, native advertising can put consumers off. All hope is not lost, however. We predict that brands who seamlessly integrate the use of native advertising and well as editorial content into their website marketing strategy will be far more successful than brands who’re only producing one type of content.
It’s a well-documented fact that website marketing that utilises multiple types of content gains considerable traction.
The saying, “Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket” applies – by creating various types of content, you’re providing more ways for people to interact with your brand. Traditional website marketing relies on optimising your content for SEO and then sharing it on social media in an effort to conduct social selling and encourage brand advocacy. While this approach certainly works, the ever-evolving nature of the digital realm means that marketers need to constantly seek out fresh ways of engaging their audiences. At the end of the day, there’s no such things as a fail-proof website marketing strategy. Our suggestion?
Incorporate the use of native advertising into your existing strategies
If you’re looking to drive more people to your website (and let’s be honest, who isn’t?), we’re of the opinion that in this case more, is in fact more. (And by more, we mean an additional website marketing tactic) The easiest and most effective way to implement a multi-channel marketing strategy is via an integrated marketing automation tool. Designed with the sole purpose of streamlining multi-channel website marketing, Ensight enables you to post content across multiple digital platforms, from one set of software.
Quality content relies on the right channels in order to engage as many people as possible
Adequately distributing your content is essential. If you’re only posting content to your company blog, there’s very little chance of it gaining sufficient attention. If you’re posting content to your blog, as well as across social media, via email campaigns and in the form of native advertising, your resulting traffic will be inordinately heavier.
As with all other digital platforms, native advertising doesn’t work in isolation
If you don’t have a dedicated landing page for your market to visit after clicking on a link in your paid-for native advertisement, how do you expect people to reach you? In the same vein, merely having an article published on whichever site you’re using for your native advertising won’t attract half as much attention than if you were to publish links across several social media channels.
The most successful website marketing employs the use of multiple channels which work in unison to create an all-encompassing campaign. It’s therefor imperative that you’re using multi-channel marketing software that allows you to run streamlined campaigns. It’s essential that you’re able to post various types of content – including native advertising – across several platforms and then track its performance in order to gain valuable insight into what’s working, and what’s not.
Gareth Slaven in CEO of Ensight, a marketing automation platform. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/gthinking0
