Whether you're an established company looking to increase sales or a startup trying to build a loyal community of customers, improving brand awareness is key to growing your business.

After all, your brand is more than just a logo or a name—it's the promise you make to your customers. It's the experience they have when they interact with your products or services and how that experience makes them feel.

When people see your brand in their daily lives, they're reminded of that promise and want to continue the relationship. This is where native advertising shines—connecting customers with businesses over meaningful and authentic content.

The Benefits of Native Advertising

With the rise of content marketing, companies are looking for ways to reach their target audiences and provide them with information about their products without being too pushy. Native advertising is a terrific way to do this because it uses content tailored to an audience's interests to promote brands or products.

But you might be wondering if it's really worth all that time and effort. In other words, does native advertising actually work? In this post, we'll explore how native advertising can help boost your brand awareness by increasing visibility and engagement among potential customers.

#1 Reaching Target Audiences at the Right Time and Place

Native advertising means reaching your audience more effectively and in a less obtrusive way. Native ads fit naturally within the content they're embedded within, giving them a much higher click-through rate than traditional banner ads. This makes them a highly efficient way to reach consumers online.

All advertising campaigns aim to reach their target audience as effectively as possible. Native ads allow brands to create a more intimate connection with consumers, making them more receptive to your message. This makes it possible for you to reach the right people at the right time and in the right place.

Native ads can be divided into three core types:

• In-feed - The content within these ads feels like an extension of the publisher's website. They can appear as articles, videos, or images and work best when they're relevant to the content on the page they're embedded in.
• Content recommendation - Ads that appear in a sidebar or at the top of the page. They're designed to look like suggestions of other content that may be similar to what you're currently reading.
• Branded Content - These usually come in the form of an article, essay, or other pieces of content that will live on another website and look just like any other articles there. Only a small logo or notation indicates that you created the ad.

Readpeak enables users to display native ads in the form of in-feed ads. In fact, Readpeak makes it possible to connect with multiple publishers and advertisers through one platform. This allows every user to create highly targeted campaigns that will attract a more targeted customer base. For example, a dairy manufacturer may sponsor recipe suggestions based on their products in an online newspaper typically visited by cooking lovers—reaching the users most receptive to their product. Valio's success story is a prime example of how strategic targeting can lead to achieving goals.

#2 The Importance of Storytelling for a Brand

Storytelling is a tried-and-true method for captivating an audience. Stories help keep a company's message alive, increase its impact over time, and give it staying power. This enables companies to connect with their customers, creating a meaningful bond that keeps people coming back for more.

Because of its engaging nature, native advertising is often formatted as an informative or entertaining story rather than a blatant advertisement. Not only does this make your brand more memorable, but it also helps establish trust between you and your customers by showing that a person is behind the messages they receive—rather than just another faceless corporation.

When you're writing your story, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Make sure that it's authentic—it should be something that you actually believe in. You want your customers to feel like they're getting an inside look at what makes you unique, not just reading some generic copy from a marketing department.
• People remember stories much better than facts or figures alone because they are more relatable than data points. They provide additional context and meaning to the content being shared.
• According to studies, native ads are 60% more likely than display ads to be remembered by consumers.
• Increase the visibility of your native advertising strategy with the use of compelling titles. This will make your ads more memorable and help readers easily recognise your brand the next time they see it.

For some more tips on how to optimise your native campaign, check out this article. The bottom line is that storytelling engages people on a personal level that isn't possible through other forms of advertising; therefore, it results in stronger relationships between brands and their customers over time!

#3 Heightened Reliability Provided by the Ad Format

Since consumers find advertising that interferes with their experience of a product or service to be intrusive and distracting, a successful campaign must avoid this pitfall. Here's where native advertising really hits the mark.

Advertising can provide useful information and should be written in a way that balances salesmanship with creativity. However, if users are bombarded with spam or overly intrusive messages, they may stop reading them altogether, as they already do with most advertising forms.

Banner Blindness

You’ve probably heard of the "banner blindness phenomenon," where users are less likely to notice banner ads on a website. Well, another pro to native advertising is that it's a more powerful solution to banner blindness than other forms of online marketing, as it is designed to blend in with the content around it and is, therefore, more likely to be seen.

When you can show your audience that you understand them as individuals and not just a mass market, they're more likely to feel good about buying from or working with you. Creating such a lasting association helps you achieve your business goals while increasing consumer confidence.

Ad Fatigue

Ad fatigue occurs when users become annoyed or bored with the sheer volume of ads they see on a regular basis. They may also feel overwhelmed by the number of different products vying for their attention. Native advertising effectively solves this problem because it does not interrupt users' online activities or force them to stop reading content that interests them. Instead, ads are placed in more appropriate contexts, resulting in less ad fatigue for users and increasing engagement.

Additionally, this approach enables brands to reach new potential customers as well as interact in a more personal way with existing ones. By harnessing the power of targeted, relevant messaging to your ideal audience, you can improve the connection between a business's objectives and the needs of its consumers. The end result is a more personalised and relevant experience for users, a higher chance of conversion, and ultimately greater ROI.

Already Have Your Answer?

Native advertising is an excellent way to build brand recognition, but it's vital that brands use subtle techniques and avoid hard-selling tactics. Native ads can drive higher engagement and click-through rates while ensuring a seamless customer experience—but only if you get the implementation right.

Keep in mind that the success of a native advertising campaign will depend on multiple factors, including the quality, relevance, and placement of ads. If you're looking for more ways to improve your awareness-stage content, these 13 native-content ideas are a great place to start.

Here are some pro pointers to help you begin:

• Relevance is key - Native ads should be as relevant and valuable to readers as possible. This means that you must understand your audience well and ensure that your content is on-brand with their interests.
• Label your ads - It's essential to make sure that native advertising is clearly labelled as such and doesn't contradict the messaging of a publisher's brand. To avoid costly mistakes and get the most out of native advertising, read this article.
• Track performance - Mixing up your marketing channels and using A/B testing to track which campaigns are most effective will help you craft a successful awareness strategy.

To reach your potential customers, you need to connect with them in the online spaces where they spend their time. By tailoring your content for the various environments in which it will be viewed, you increase people's chances of engaging with and retaining your message—factors that significantly contribute to building awareness for your brand.

So, does native advertising increase brand awareness? You bet! When done right, it will help you connect more authentically with your target audience.

Readpeak | Native Advertising Solutions

Readpeak brings advertisers and publishers together through the power of native advertising. Offering a comprehensive suite of tools, including advanced targeting and measurement capabilities, Readpeak's platform is the perfect solution to drive customer acquisition and retention.

To learn more about Readpeak and how we can help you achieve your native advertising goals, sign up for free today or contact our friendly customer service team to schedule a demo.