Alternatives to Pricey Paid Social Ads

BY Rachel Cagle
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Are your clients investors in paid social advertising? If so, they’re more than aware of the rising prices of this ad media type. Paid social’s key performance indicators (KPIs) are declining. You clients are probably extremely frustrated by this turn of events. And they’re not alone.

Declining Paid Social KPIs

CommerceNext surveyed top retail and brand marketing leaders to learn more about what they expect for the rest of 2022. Only 26% reported that their KPIs in paid social either improved or remained the same since the latest changes were made to iOS 14/​15 that restrict data tracking. Everyone else had their KPIs

  • Decline by less than 10%: 32%
  • Lessened by between 10% and 20%: 31%
  • Lowered by more than 30%: 10%

Understandably, that makes 82% of marketing leaders at least somewhat concerned about their future KPI performance.

KPIs didn’t dimmish overnight,” reports CommerceNext. “Rather, marketers noticed a gradual drop as more users adopted the iOS 14/​15 changes, pushing retailers to slowly begin testing other channels. A third of those surveyed wrote that they are concerned enough to have already started shifting spend to other channels.” It may be time for your clients to consider following suit.

New Advertising Allocations in 2022

Leading marketers have different advertising strategies when it comes to acquiring new customers and retaining their existing clientele.

Advertising Media Used to Acquire New Customers:

  • Paid Social: 78% of leading marketers say that they’re going to stick with paid social as the top media type they’ll allocate funds to in order to try to win over new business, even with declining KPIs
  • Paid Search: 69%
  • Influencer Marketing: 46%
  • Affiliate/​Partner Relationships: 37%
  • SEO: 32%

Advertising Media Used to Retain Existing Customers:

  • Email: 87% of marketers say email is the advertising medium they’re going to invest the most money into in order to retain their existing customer base
  • SMS: 56%
  • Content (such as blogs or newsletters): 19%

So, no matter which route they take, marketers still plan on investing heavily in digital advertising.

Investing in Loyalty Programs

Since customer retention is becoming increasingly important to companies, many will be focusing their investments on establishing or bettering existing loyalty programs. “Small brands to large legacy enterprises have realized they must expand their loyalty programs to include incentives like access to more premium offerings and free two-​day shipping/​returns,” says CommerceNext.

The trend toward improving loyalty programs also gives marketers the opportunity to raise awareness through email and SMS ads. When customers sign up for loyalty programs, they need to provide the company with at least their email address, if not also their phone number. So, marketers can easily reach customers that they know are interested in their company’s products or services using these advertising methods. (Here's some advice on how to make your emails stand out.) Not only that, CommerceNext points out that loyalty programs should pair with clear KPIs.

Our research agrees: Loyalty programs are good investments. According to AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel, 12.5% of U.S. consumers have AT LEAST 10 loyalty cards/​programs/​apps. Also, within the last year, 45.8% of these consumers took action after either seeing a mobile ad on their smartphone apps or receiving a text ad. Additionally, they are 56% more likely than other consumers to take action after receiving email ads. Their favorite types of emails to receive from businesses include coupons or discount codes, birthday rewards and limited-​time offers and sales.

Move over, paid social; there’s an easier way to get consumers’ attention and track their interests.

What Do Your Client’s Target Customers Want?

These all may be the routes that other marketers are taking, but which advertising types should your client be using to replace paid social? Check out their target audience’s profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel to find out which ad types have influenced the largest percentage of these consumers to take action within the past year.

Photo by Shawn Fields


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