What to aim for when launching Facebook and Instagram ads in 2019
The world of social media is constantly changing and advertisers must adapt their strategies in order to keep up. At Aitarget we’ve compiled some trends for 2019 for marketers to consider in order to prepare more effective Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns.
Social Stories-telling
There are a billion daily active users across Stories on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Facebook predicts that during 2019 Stories will overtake News Feeds as the primary way people share content. Across Facebook’s family of platforms, Stories are already growing (in users) 15 times faster than news feeds.
Instagram Stories. Source: Instagram Business
Stories require less production for videos: live, behind-the-scenes, raw, and unedited content suits them best. Use Instagram’s Highlight feature to extend exposure on high-production content longer than 24 hours and make navigating your services more convenient for users.
Brands should explore different Instagram Stories ad formats: single image or video, Instant Experience, Carousel Ads. With the recent launch of Prompted Carousel Ads for Stories, advertisers can now show not only three fullscreen cards, but up to 10 horizontal cards in one ad.
Brands should consider incorporating AR experiences and GIF stickers into their Stories. Such content can grab attention and persuade users to be interact more with your brand.
Facebook promotes the idea of the future shown through Stories. Although growth of Facebook Stories is less intensive than prototypes on Instagram, brands shouldn’t neglect the opportunity to use both placements when setting up ad campaigns.
Micro-Influencers
Harnessing influencers to help promote your brand is a good option: McKinsey reports that 20–50% of all purchasing decisions are based on user-to-user recommendations.
But which influencers matter most? The audience want to see authentic and genuine content coming from opinion leaders whose views they share. This has caused a rise in the power of micro-influencers: bloggers with a quite narrow but highly loyal audience.
Research has shown that 82% of consumers are highly likely to follow recommendations from micro-influencers. Importantly, the engagement level for user interaction with micro-influencers is 6.7 times more efficient than with large influencers who have highly popular accounts (while the cost for brands is lower).
Business Influencers in Facebook and Instagram. Source: Facebook Blueprint
Ensure you include micro-influencers in your marketing strategy to improve the quality of reach into niche audiences.
Amplify your impact by using both micro-influencers and macro-influencers: for example, utilise macro-influencers to launch a simple brand awareness campaign, while affecting the purchase decision with the help of micro-influencers.
Find relevant influencers and discover high-quality posts by using hashtag search, mentions, and location tags on Instagram.
While ads are not yet available on IGTV, brands can partner up with influencers and creators to produce marketing videos for this platform.
Vertical Video
The rising importance and influence of video on social media has been a megatrend for a few years now, and looks set to continue for several years to come. It is now forecast that by 2022, 82% of global internet traffic will be video.
In December 2018, Facebook announced its Facebook Watch video platform had gained more than 400 million monthly users and 75 million daily users just three months after its global launch. In 2019, Facebook are bringing Ad Breaks to creators in more countries.
Video content is particularly popular with mobile users. From 2013 to 2018 the mobile share of global digital video plays rose from 14% to 62%. Videos influence and impact doesn’t show any signs of slowing down in 2019. In June 2018 IGTV was launched, a new platform allowing users to watch long-form, vertical videos from their favorite Instagram creators.
Introducing IGTV. Source: Instagram Business. Expanding Watch Party to Pages and People. Source: Facebook for Media
Move towards a mobile-first video strategy for your marketing, and incorporate varied formats into your campaigns, such as live-streaming, social TV, and video ads.
Take advantage of the 9:16 mobile screen space and create vertical or square videos to take up more space and receive higher engagement.
Use videos originally created for mobile. According to Facebook statistics, mobile-first video ads are 27% more efficient for brand promotion and 23% more effective for direct response from customers than videos optimised for mobile format.
If you don’t have enough resources for complicated video production, use some simpler tools that are available to increase engagements, such as creating videos from images using Video Creation Kit, a built-in Facebook tool.
Consider including Ad Breaks on Facebook Watch in the ad placement.
3, 2, 1, we’re live
Live-streaming videos on Facebook have become increasingly popular. Last year, Facebook announced that hundreds of millions of people had used is Facebook Live feature in its first two years, with 3.5 billion total Facebook Live broadcasts and more than 150 billion reactions to Live video. Broadcasts were doubling each year. More importantly for brands and marketers: Live broadcasts generate six times the interactions of regular videos.
Tips + Tricks. Source: Facebook Live
Share behind-the-scenes content from your brand and business via Facebook Live and Instagram Live. Post personal, genuine, and progress content that gives users a sense of authenticity and originality.
Combine Live video with influencer marketings – have influencers promote your videos through their live streams for a broader audience. This will expand your reach and allow you to interact with users who didn’t yet know you.
If you’re unsure what to include in a Live broadcast, a good option is to share some educational content related to your mission or the specialisation of your brand.
The continued rise in chatbots
With about 45% of end users preferring chatbots as a primary tool to communicate with brands if they need any support, and demand expected to increase, it is important for businesses to embrace AI technology with their customer service. With the help of AI, chatbots can improve the customer experience and answer questions within seconds.
Messaging traffic is expected to double in 2019, to over 100 trillion messages.
Build a smarter Messenger chatbot with machine learning tools that have natural language processing functionalities. Consider the variety of ways in which the client may formulate their approach.
Use emojis, images, and even augmented reality to allow your chatbot to better convey your brand personality.
Add personalisation to your bot for promoting features. As marketer polling shows, 91% of consumers are more likely to purchase something from a brand who provide relevant offers and recommendations.
Keep it simple, accessible, and don’t overload with information or complicated processes.
Utilise WhatsApp Business App and Instagram Direct to make your business available across multiple platforms where it is more convenient to interact with customers and meet their enquiries.
Bear in mind that Facebook plans to Integrate WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger. Brands should probably get ready to create a comprehensive and universal chatbot in the near future.
More realities
Facebook have made it clear that augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are the future. The social network has already released AR camera effects on Messenger and Instagram, 360-degree photos and videos, 3D posts and photos. Now they are working on bringing AR out of the News Feeds and creating augmented reality glasses.
Introducing New Ways to Inspire Holiday Shoppers with Video. Source: Facebook Business
If it is suitable for your overall marketing strategy, look to implement AR and VR into your ad campaigns to help you stand out from the crowd.
Explore creative formats like 360 Video and virtual reality for a more immersive, engaging, and realistic experience.
For the e-commerce family, use AR and VR to display your product range and allow consumers to interact, try on, and play around with your products to help close the gap in the final stage of the customer purchasing journey.
Experiment with interactive AR effects and filters on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Social e-commerce
Social e-commerce gives users the ability to purchase products through social media. It is maintained by a platform’s ad formats, for example shoppable Instagram and Checkout option and Snapchat ads.
Introducing Checkout on Instagram. Source: Instagram Press
Get your business profile approved and sell your products on Instagram with shoppable Instagram and Stories organic posts.
Take advantage of dynamic advertising for both retargeting interested users and for attracting those who are not yet familiar with your brand.
Tailor your ads towards your customers’ interests by using Collections, Instant Experience, and with single images and videos through automatic pricing and other parameters updates.
Changing consumption
We don’t live in a one-device digital world. Users live in a continuous digital space. On average, each user will have 2.4 devices with Internet access, all of which can be used to interact with your brand. A modern-day purchase could look something like this: a user sees a product in a mobile ad, begins an independent search for the product on their desktop, then goes to a physical store to try it on, and eventually orders it online via a tablet.
Marketers need to take a holistic view of customer interactions with their brand.
Make your creatives fast, clear, and memorable to help persuade users to continue their interaction with your ad and brand.
Collect analytical data on user behaviour both from your website and app by using Facebook Pixel and SDK.
Use dynamic advertising, which selects products from your catalogue to display in accordance with users’ actions. Do not forget about Deep Links, which will help to link the user to a specific product page and customise cross-platform retargeting.
Personalisation
Personalisation has been trending in recent years. More than 70% of people prefer ads that are tailored to their interests. Additionally, more than half of consumers are willing to share personal data for personalised offers or discounts, while 44% of consumers are more likely to become repeat buyers after a personalised shopping experience.
Personalised videos for La Roche-Posay. Source: Giving special care with La Roche-Posay
Use tools and strategies for personalisation to tailor your ads towards the individual needs of different audiences.
This year will be another exciting one in the digital marketing space. Overall it seems that 2019 will be about visualising your brand with mobile videos, AR and VR, shifting the focus towards micro-influencers, developing chatbot messaging, and ads personalisation.
Harness these trends to improve your results.
