Native advertising is a style of paid advertising that markets your solution in a way that the ad looks consistent with the branded style of the platform you’ve uploaded it on. The purpose of native content is to have your digital ad exist cohesively on the host platform. It can be images, written, or other types of multimedia content. When your goal is to increase the awareness and demand generation of your solution, using native advertising helps reach that larger audience without distracting users too much.
The Power of Native Advertising in Demand Generation
Native ads are meant to blend seamlessly into the user experience. They aren’t always meant to look like ads, and can sometimes be difficult to spot. And for that reason, they’re a rising trend in paid advertising. Native advertising capitalizes on having the attention of your audience by mimicking the look or style of the site or app it’s on. This way, it doesn’t come across as jarring, or annoying, to users.
They’re most popular on social media platforms but can be placed directly on websites or pages. Native ads should include appealing visuals, information, and a call-to-action (CTA) that offers value to the audience. When a user comes across a native ad, they’re most commonly in a discovery phase and therefore likely to better absorb content.
Because these ads typically show great engagement results and often outperform other marketing strategies, more businesses choose to adopt native advertising when it comes to demand generation. Instead of aggressively pushing your solution onto users with out-of-place-looking banners or pop-ups, native advertising strategically calls for more casual engagement while placing your brand front of mind for the audience.
Native Advertising vs Traditional Advertising
When you think about the typical user experience on any given platform, even your own, when there are advertising banners or pop-ups on a site, they mindlessly click around them and ignore them. This is banner blindness. When an ad is aggressively placed on a page and isn’t coherent at all with its surroundings, the chances of it being recognized or engaged with in a positive way are slim.
Native ads challenge this negative association with traditional advertising by prioritizing user experience and integrating the ad within the host platform, rather than sticking a universal ad on a banner. In-feed or in-story ads on Instagram are a great example of native advertising. While scrolling through their normal feed, a user might come across sponsored or promoted posts in the same format as usual posts, but it’s advertising a specific product or service. Because of this, the user’s experience isn’t entirely disrupted.
There are several benefits of native advertising, but one that’ll translate pretty immediately is engagement from your target audience. When they come across your brand through native advertising, they won’t associate it with intrusive marketing where they feel they must ignore it. They’ll be more receptive to it which will lead to more clicks to your website or landing page. Or, directly to a subscription sign-up, trial offering, or whatever your ultimate CTA is, thus generating leads.
Leveraging Content Marketing in Demand Generation
Native advertising as a content marketing strategy continues to evolve to help businesses generate high-quality leads and begin funneling them into their sales processes. There’s a degree of synergy between content marketing and native advertising. Together, the ads don’t directly push for a sale, but instead they work to consistently get in front of your target audience with captivating and relevant content.
The best native ads include compelling branded content that comes across as both relevant and of value to the audience. Reference your ideal customer profile (ICP) or buyer personas when deciding how to accomplish this. Define exactly what your target audience would consider valuable to them. Your goal is to constantly align the content with those ICPs as well as where a user is in their customer journey at any given moment.
Native Advertising Platforms for Demand Generation
Deciding which platform, or platforms, are best for your native ads to assist in your demand gen is typically reliant on the audience you’re targeting and what industry your business falls in. The last thing you want to do is invest in any ad campaign that doesn’t reach users in your ICP. Once you have your target audience identified, think about their buyer journey and user experience to select what platforms they’d most likely be on and be most receptive to an ad from you.
Some of the top performing platforms to consider using for native advertising are LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Google ads. Generally, B2B marketing uses cross-channel marketing in their ad campaigns. This can be the case for native advertising, as long as you adjust and edit the ad to integrate with the next platform you’ll upload it to.
Having your end goal and target audience in mind when selecting an ad platform is important, but it’s also important to prioritize those same things when actually creating and drafting the ad itself. For a user to come across your ad and want to engage with it, it needs to offer true value to them. The native ad should be personable and include copy that is coherent with your brand voice.
Crafting a Native Advertising Strategy for Demand Gen
Like any marketing strategy you choose to implement, the first step in crafting a native advertising strategy is to set clear objectives and define the campaign’s key performance indicators (KPIs). After you’ve selected your target audience, chosen your advertising platform, and ad design, also incorporate direct CTAs that lead users back to your site or landing page to drive conversions.
Some important metrics to consider tracking for assessing your campaign performance can include click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates (CR), total number of conversions, and cost per lead (CPL). Regularly monitoring these metrics will not only help you visualize the campaign’s success, but also help strategize how to improve it through potential A/B testing. This way, you’re constantly implementing new native advertising best practices.
Bottom Line: Native Advertising for Demand Generation
Native advertising continues to be a great demand generation tactic for B2B companies. Native ad campaigns are easily integrated into any B2B content marketing strategy and prioritize user experience while still increasing brand awareness and lead generation. Since one of the biggest challenges of traditional advertising can be brand perception and engagement, native advertising can lead to sustained growth for any business in our digital age.
