Alyssa Marchuk

by Alyssa Marchuk | Digital Strategy

Does it seem like you’ve exhausted all options when it comes to your paid media strategy? Maybe your Facebook and Google ads are performing alright, but you’re looking to liven things up and expand your marketing. Check out three non-traditional ways to expand your brand’s marketing presence.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a great way to get the word out about a product. Influencers are trusted for their recommendations by loyal followers, making those who purchase by their suggestion high quality customers. Influencers can be great to utilize for new product launches or physical products, and can be very strong for niche markets where followers are interested in a very specific product or topic. Similarly, influencer marketing can be cost-effective in that a single fee paid for a one-time promotion can generate exponential return.

Some additional benefits include more accurate “audience targeting” because the influencer already has an audience of people who follow based on how the influencer aligns with their own interests and aspirations. Additionally, the brand awareness that can be generated from influencers can be very large due to their audience reach.

In their Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2021, Influencer Marketing Hub surveyed more than 5000 marketing agencies, brands, and other relevant professionals. 11% of respondents intend to spend at least 40% of their marketing budget on influencer marketing.
Breakdown of how much marketers plan to spend on influencer marketing
68% of respondents use Instagram for influencer marketing but TikTok is quickly catching up.

Influencer campaign channel utilization
Pros:

  • Trusted for recommendations
  • Great for product launches or physical products
  • Strong in niche markets
  • Can be cost-effective
  • More accurate “audience targeting”
  • Brand awareness

Cons:

  • Can be pricey for certain influencers and their market
  • Can be difficult to measure generated brand awareness

Yelp

Yelp is a platform that doesn’t always immediately come to mind when thinking about advertising, but is a great platform for advertising local businesses in an immediate geographic area. With Yelp ads, businesses can reach more potential customers by spending as little as a few dollars a day. In addition to the benefits of generating more business, the platform is helpful for gathering feedback from consumers to inform future business decisions.

Pros:

  • 97% of users make a purchase after visiting Yelp
  • You can reach 3x more potential customers by running ads through Yelp (Yelp Ads puts your business above the search results and on competitor pages)
  • Only pay when someone clicks your ad
  • Through Yelp’s keyword targeting, there’s more control over who sees the ad, so customers that are actively searching for your service can find you
  • Yelp keyword targeting example
  • Through Yelp’s location-based targeting, ads can be displayed a specified distance away from your business location, allowing you to better target your audience. Some businesses may want to cast a wide net while others want to focus on customers very close to their business’s location
  • Example of Yelp geotargeting

Cons:

  • The cost to generate a click can be expensive. Depending on the business’s customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value, this could align with goals, but is something to be noted
  • Not necessarily a con, but if your business is not local and is online, Yelp advertising might not be the best fit

Rokt

Rokt is a company you might have seen, but never realized the connection behind the advertisement. Picture this – you’re buying concert tickets on TicketMaster for your upcoming vacation in Florida. As soon as you check out, on the confirmation page, you’re prompted with a pop up that asks you if you’d also like 10% off a rental car service. That’s Rokt! [Disclosure: Rokt is a Metric Theory client.]

Rokt offers the option to have ads appear on your brand’s confirmation page or for you to be the brand that’s presented on another brand’s confirmation page.

Through Rokt Ecommerce, a brand can host other brands’ offers on their confirmation page.
How to host other brands offers on your confirmation page

Through Rokt Ads, a brand can be the offer presented on another brand’s confirmation page.
How to show your ads on other brands' confirmation pages

In addition to these two options, Rokt offers an additional marketing opportunity through Rokt Calendar with the option to target customers through calendar notifications.
Example of Rokt calendar ads

Pros:

  • Easy set up
  • Offers through Rokt Ads & Rokt Ecommerce are presented in the Transaction Moment™
    • Rokt lives in what they coined the Transaction Moment™- ads are served directly after a consumer has made a purchase on a participating ecommerce site. As users are still wrapped up with excitement about their recent purchase, you can serve an ad for a relevant offer (i.e., hotel packages for someone who just booked a flight to Las Vegas). Not only is the offer extremely relevant, you know they are in a mindset to purchase.
  • High quality, native placements
    • Rokt’s ad network boasts over 300 well-known sites like Ticketmaster, Dominos, eBay and Spirit Airlines. The ad placement itself is seamlessly integrated into the purchase journey, so it’s an extremely native experience. Another positive aspect is that these sites generally don’t offer ad inventory anywhere else. So your reach through Rokt is truly incremental.
  • Pay for performance
    • Rokt’s bidding model works similarly to other real-time auctions like Google Ads, with your final price ultimately determined by a combination of your bid (Cost/Referral), and how your ad is ranked. If the offer appears on the confirmation page and someone clicks out of it or clicks “no thanks” the advertiser whose ad appeared isn’t charged. Only when someone engages with or wants to move forward with the offer will the advertiser be charged, so you are paying for engaged and interested consumers, not just driving clicks to your site.

Cons:

  • Potential high initial investment
    • Depending on your marketing budgets, Rokt budgets could be higher than desired for an initial test—and it is recommended that you test for at least a few months. We understand this may be a drawback, but we would also encourage advertisers to commit to a long enough testing period for any new channel, though the price point for Rokt might be too high for some to justify.
  • No self serve platform (yet)
    • If you’re looking for more control, look elsewhere, as this is a managed-service-only option. That does carry the benefit of having product experts help run your efforts, and you do still have visibility into the account, you just have less direct control.
  • Not an efficient channel for site traffic
    • If you are looking for wide reach and brand growth, Rokt isn’t your channel. Budget minimums are high, and it is by nature a very performance/conversion driven channel. You’d be better off exploring influencer marketing, or doubling down on existing GDN/Social investments.

These ideas barely scratch the surface of the different ways you can expand your advertising efforts. From influencer marketing’s trusted recommendations, to Yelp’s ability to focus on local aspects of a business, to Rokt’s ability to reach customers when they’re in the buying mindset, there’s an opportunity for expansion for all businesses. For more help crafting a digital marketing solution to best achieve your goals, talk to our team!

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