How do I find my audience with Sponsored Content?
You get a proposal to run a placement in a newsletter or for a sponsored mention in a Youtube video. At first glance it seems to be a good fit for you, the general topics look like they would be of interest to your ideal profile customer, the audience size and engagement stats make sense but still there is a nagging doubt that your hard won marketing budget is about to go down the drain.
How do we mitigate this feeling and explore new communities with confidence? In this article we will be diving into the techniques you can deploy and elements you should be thinking about in putting together your sponsored content strategies.
Time for a caveat:
We are talking about mitigating risk here not eliminating completely.
There is always the chance that a placement despite all due diligence and preparation can go awry. With email it could be a bad delivery with a number going to spam, on youtube the title might not be picked up well on searches reducing views, there are a multitude of reasons why a placement may not turn out as expected that are hard to control. This article aims to help you navigate all those areas you can control.
Title matching
Perhaps unsurprisingly Advertisers naturally gravitate to publications with a “keyword” in the title. If you’re looking for CSS developers going for CSS weekly makes perfect sense, likewise if you are selling luxury travel items Jetsetter sings the same tune. It’s not a bad place to start but not only is it limiting it can also go horribly awry.
Take the word Design. Of all the subject keywords in the ThoughtLeader’s marketplace this appears more than any other. If you were booking placements only on the title you would find yourself in publications related to front-end design, graphic design, interior design. Highly unlikely that these diverse audiences fit the same advertiser so whilst title matching can be a good start it definitely is not a sophisticated approach.
Profile Mining
Profile Mining is basically the opposite of Title Matching. This is one of the most important points in finding your audience. You have an idea that a ThoughtLeader has a good audience for you but you aren’t 100% sure, how to go about ensuring relevancy?
Be upfront about what you are looking for. We’ve worked with a lot of advertisers who are remarkably guarded about what their campaign is for no apparent reason. Let’s look at an example.
An advertiser wants to reach entrepreneurs looking for payroll services on the Futur, an amazing publisher with a wide professional creative audience. It can be a perfect fit.
Option 1: They book DIY an ad spot in their newsletter reaching 35k people. A nice little placement but not necessarily something that is going to really move the needle. Can be a great basis for a test however, just not a full campaign.
Option 2: They ask “I’m looking to reach entrepreneurs looking for payroll services, do you think this can be a good fit?”
Now that we know more details we can move the content to the advertisers needs. A great idea can be a YouTube video discussing the challenges around Payroll for creative agencies (for example booking hours) using the advertisers product as a basis to discuss it. Now the advertiser gets a seriously targeted piece of content aimed exactly at the audience they want that’s evergreen.
This isn’t programmatic advertising. Publishers doing sponsored content not only have flexibility, they are super happy to build something that is tailored to your needs. At ThoughtLeaders we do this all the time for clients. We send out a clear brief and challenge the publishers to come back to us with the most relevant content ideas. If you have a brief you’d like to send out, let’s discuss it.
Pricing a funnel
There are a few things to think about when pricing out a funnel and the more general the audience you are looking for is the more important this becomes. We work with a lot of direct to consumer advertisers and the key thing above all for the vast majority is ROI, not brand recognition, cold hard cash back.
So how do you get the results you are looking for in this space?
Know your CPA:
Quite often we come across advertisers who don’t have a clear idea of what their CPA is. Either the product is in an early stage or it is a new line or they aren’t sure how to price a CPA in sponsored content. You will be able to go into Sponsored Content with much more confidence if you have a clear idea of what you want to get out of it.
Test:
Sponsored content is a channel much like any other which means going through the cycle of testing and optimising. This means we should have a testing MO laid out and always be considering what the potential upside could be from a really good publisher.
There are a few points to consider when laying out a testing MO:
- What am I testing for?
- What is a test budget per placement?
- What can I get from the publisher long term?
What am I testing for?
Testing could be about trying a format (more on that next week), testing messaging, an audience profile or even a product feature! Going into a test with a clear idea on what you are looking for beyond of course the simple result can pay enormous dividends in opening up new avenues for customer acquisition.
What is a test budget per placement?
This of course depends heavily on what the placement is on offer but knowing what you are willing to spend per placement helps frame the testing strategy. For example if you are on an annual marketing budget of $1m how much of that is for experimentation and how much is on tried and tested options? By setting yourself clear guidelines on a budget per test placement it can provide a clear framework for moving forwards. Remember that with sponsored content the the vast majority of placements are fixed price. It makes sense they are limited in their availability and there is custom work that goes into each and every one. It makes testing very clear and has the massive upside of the potential of getting some tremendous value.
What can I get from the publisher long term?
This really splits into two camps. On the one hand you can find publishers with which you want to return to time and time again. This is the foundation of building a reliable strategy. On the other side of things there are publishers that offer multiple options for scaling including some highly customised options for evergreen placements that seriously contributes to your overall lead generation.
To get the most of your sponsored content strategy book a consultation with us
