How an Advertorial Will Skyrocket Sales and Why You Should Have One
Simply put, advertorials allow you to give information to your audience by placing advertising within your marketing copy. It appears as a regular article, that has advertising within the content. Usually, the ad is subtle, but it also can be bold.
The number one thing is to push 70 percent amazing content with 30 percent advertorial.
Seventy percent of your content should gain the readers trust and interest. If that seventy percent is engaging, the ad becomes a trusted ad. The content is more likely to be shared on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
The content should be informational and talk about a solution to someone's problem. It should be written with empathy towards the audience and cause emotion.
How Advertorials Work
Essentially, your article would appear on a popular publication such as The Huffington Post, CNN, your landing page, magazine article, e-book, blog or website, The advertorial or sponsorship ad appears within the article.
Let’s say you are reading an article about a certain type of food such as hamburgers and where the best burgers are in town. The content will teach you about beef choices used for the best burgers in town, different options on the menu, and where to eat them. A small ad will appear somewhere in the body of the article. It can also be somewhere alongside the copy in a white space at the top, right, or left
The sponsored "advertorial" may be a ketchup company looking to draw in marketing for their brand.They advertiser banks on the fact that you will love condiments on your hamburger and wants you to see their brand in that article. It is strategic ad placement at its finest!!
Brand Awareness Increases Sales
The advertiser is hoping the next time you go to the supermarket, you reach for Heinz Ketchup to make some burgers at home.
If it’s in THE HUFFINGTON POST it must be credible?
Not necessarily. This is just one example of the myriad of publications to publish on. Whatever people think is a credible site, is where the traffic may lie, but you must be careful to choose where their reader will sincerely engage with your content . Medium and StumbledUpon and HackerNews are great high traffic sites to share on.
Don't count out smaller niche sites in your vertical.
Using the example above with ketchup, this type of advertorial would also do well on a niche bloggers site for food. With so many up and coming bloggers gaining more traffic than traditional online media sites, search these bloggers out and ask for permission to create an advertorial with them.
How to Find Influencial Bloggers
BuzzSumo- Find the most shared content for your vertical and what their social media stats are for Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Klear- This site offers some free tools to see the most influencers in Twitter, and Instagram.
YouTube- Influencers that have extraordinary channel traffic also have blogs. Their blogs are listed on their profile pages. See if your competition is linking to any of them for increased traffic.
Obtain the demographics and the psychographics of the the audience for the publication your content is going to appear. Target markets can have radically different demographics. The different traits of the consumer and their behaviors such as their activities, types of lifestyles, and personal opinions are just a few of the traits that can be looked at in a consumer behavior.
Kresge Library Services Guide is an excellent website to find information on statistics and data sources for consumer marketing information and web demographics.
What type of content should an advertorial be in? Basically anything. Here are a few ideas.
• Travel Guides • How To Articles • Product Reviews • Videos • Printed Articles • Story based articles • News articles • Mail advertising
E-Books
What Should The Ad Include?
The ad portion should be simple and unobtrusive. It should visually be about 30 percent or less of the content. Some advertisers will go bolder with larger photos.Make the point to tell your story around the ad. Your not selling here, your educating and entertaining.
The ad should have links to the brand's website for that specific product or service. It depends on what the advertorial is trying to accomplish.
A call to action is necessary. Calls to action include
• How to buy • How to download • How to subscribe • Coupons • Free Trials
Make sure to back up your credentials. Do not just brag about the accomplishment, but rather make it a story your reader will want to relate to and share with others.
Some brands may not use a call to action. The advertiser is clearly stating brand awareness. alone. Larger brands with big budgets can do this more effectively. When competing with big brands, writing about pain points and how your brand offers a better solution is the key for engaging copy.
How To Relate to Your Audience
The reader should be looking at themselves in the mirror when reading your content.
The reader sees words that are familiar to them and they relate to how the product could work for them.
You give testimonials of current clients.
You have placed visuals that look like the target audience, For example you have a skin care products for acne and the picture gleams an attractive person with acne and an after photo of the same person with clear skin.
Address pain points such as " Have you ever?", "Did this happen to you?" Have you ever felt?
The Layout for Your Advertorial
Layouts should be optimized for mobile and web .
Today’s reader is engaging more on mobile devices more than ever. Make sure your content for mobile is easy to read and formatted for all devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
Web layouts can and should be larger. Know where your audience is reading your content and tailor the design of your content for the audience.
The copy should appear visually to the similar size of editorial copy for that publication. Full or half page length is ideal.
Here are some examples of consumer based products.
Here is a link and an excellent example for a business advertorial works for JP. Morgan
Researching your competitors
Research your competitor's claims and call them out on it. You must provide documented evidence of the facts to avoid any confrontations with the other brand for libel claims. Big brands do this all the time. You've seen it with paper towel commercials on TV. The familiar slogan, "The quicker picker upper." The video here shows the brand only mentioning that they are better than " The Leading Brand".
There is enough to spark interest to the reader to buy your brand and see if the claim is true.
If your target market is not competitive with a leading brand or service, your content writer will be able to write an advertorial that position your product or service to increase revenue. If you already work with big brand customers, you can use them as mentions in your content.
In final, advertorials provide more interest and engagement that just a plain old banner and a pop-up ad. Consumers today want to be able to trust and feel good about their purchase.Advertorials give your brand the opportunity to market itself effectively without breaking the bank on your budget.
Need an advertorial written for your business? contact AZ Publishers. We will prepare an amazing advertorial for you today.
