No paid advertising campaign can work without a strategy that guarantees an excellent return on investment (ROI). Native advertising is a growing trend within digital marketing that aims to maximise the effectiveness of paid ads in innovative ways. But how exactly does it work? More importantly, how can you make it work for your next advertising campaign?

Native ads behave like any other paid ad – with a key difference. Native ads are designed to fit seamlessly with their hosted page, almost appearing as part of the content. These ads look similar to the rest of the host page (i.e. native), so consumers often can't tell them apart from the actual page.

To maintain consumer trust and help separate ads, you'll find native ads with an additional "Promoted" or "Sponsored" tag. 

Today, we're going to break down four methods to make native advertising working for you. The goal isn't to dedicate all your resources to native ads at the expense of a more holistic strategy. Instead, you want to maximize any resources you invest. We're also here to help you simplify the process and get native ads working for you. 

So let's break it down!‍

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1. Start with the right publishers

To market effectively, you need a solid idea of who your ideal audience is. More importantly, for advertising, you need to know where your customers spend their time online and how to engage with them on those media.

One significant benefit of native ads is that they're less disruptive than other forms of paid ads. They blend with the flow of the page they're displayed on, so you should take the time to understand the publisher you want to advertise on.

The media you publish on will often define what you can do with your advertising copy. 

Readpeak gives you access to over 500 premium publishers, helping you find your audience wherever they are online. Throughout the platform, you can run your native ad campaign with confidence. With us, you know that you can easily find the right publisher to host your native ad campaign.

2. Make it valuable

It's easy to construct ads around a sales pitch, but there are more beneficial ways to engage with your audience. 

Try to build your ad around the value proposition for the consumer. As marketers, it can be easy to focus on your primary problem: how to make a sale. The truth is that consumers spend most of their time thinking about their own issues, so present your ad as a solution to their most pressing needs.

Useful information in your ads can help boost brand awareness and lead generation by offering free value to potential customers. Think of advertising content as a way to establish yourself and your brand as an industry leader. Doing this can foster consumer trust and encourage people to learn more about your value proposition.

Whatever space you have for text, make sure you fill it with well written copy and valuable information. With Readpeak, you can maximize your copy structure with text options like::

• Theme
• Call to action (CTA)
• Headline
• Article summary
• Advertiser name

Themes are a handy additional function, and calls to action are always beneficial to convert leads. However, headline, summary, and advertiser names are mandatory points when publishing a native campaign. Why not use Readpeak to help you generate the best ad details?‍

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3. Use native advertising for retargeting

You can do certain things to maximize your return on investment without breaking your marketing budget in the setup. Retargeting is an increasingly popular way to ensure that your ads reach the people most likely to engage with your ad and end up at the sales point.

Retargeting works by targeting consumers who have previously engaged with your ads or products. A consumer who is already aware of your brand and, more importantly, enjoys your product is more likely to respond well to an ad. 

With retargeting, you want to turn past consumers into returning customers. This creates a marketing ecosystem that can generate sales while freeing up your team's resources to reach a new audience. A healthy balance between finding new customers and retargeting is an excellent way to optimize your campaign's potential through existing and new markets.‍

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4. Test, test, test

If something isn't working in your campaign, you'll need to assess it to find a solution. Even if a part of your campaign is performing well, continuous testing could be the key to unlocking that extra level of performance.

The beauty of paid advertising is that you can use analytics to review how well each ad performs. This is especially true with native ads on media sites. 

In Readpeak we make the analytics as easy and detailed as possible. 

Native advertising can take a little time to learn and even more to refine. In another post, we give you 6 ways to optimise your native advertising campaign, starting with your campaign goals. Once you know what you want to achieve, you should define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you track your progress.

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At Readpeak, we help over 2000 companies in the Nordics build, run and optimize their native advertising campaigns. Our clients include BMW, Zmarta Group, and Docrates.

Our goal is to make your native ad campaign work for you. If you'd like to direct any questions to our team of experts, you can book a demo with us. We can't wait to hear from you!