Why Native Advertising is important for SMBs

As a business owner ask yourself: Are you familiar with Native Advertising? Do you know what it is or what it does?

Native ads are more engaging than traditional display marketing ads because they tell a story about something interesting that is related to the product or industry. The advertiser is featured as the expert and this provides your audience with the content they are looking for without it being overly promotional, which results in higher engagement, which in turn leads to brand loyalty and higher conversions.

In 2019 engaging, relevant and authentic storytelling is more important now than ever. This year will bring shifts in content formats, channels and metrics, but authentic content should remain at the top. As digital content becomes more cluttered and somewhat difficult to navigate due to restrictions and changing regulations, etc. authentic storytelling will be the highest asset for brands to follow.

SMBs are used to traditional online advertising opportunities like banner ads.  These are not as effective as they used to be, the issue with online advertising is clutter. Banner ads are getting extremely lower click through rates because readers are becoming blind to them. They are looking for content that adds value to them. They want something that educates, informs or entertains them.

When properly deployed, native advertising offers the potential for higher engagement from its target audience. According to ShareThrough native ads offer a 9 percent increase in brand affinity over banner ads, along with an 18 percent rise in conversion. This contributes to a greater potential for marketing ROI than banner ads while representing more or less the same cost. This is because they're more likely to get clicks, create positive feelings and increase the potential for a sale; native ads function as an efficient way for SMBs to spend their limited marketing budgets.

Your Native Content should have a clear headline that states what the piece is about and what value it provides to your reader.  Since native ads are designed to appear like regular content, your audience will be more willing to thoroughly read, watch, or experience it because they don’t view it as a straight-forward marketing tool.

In addition to Native Ads, video marketing is currently a huge trend because of how effective it is in terms of grabbing customer’s attention. Most consumers these days prefer to watch videos about a product or brand than read an ad or blog post, so using video is a smart way to boost engagement as well.

For SMBs that have never tried native ads, there hasn't been a better time to run a test campaign and monitor the results. The risk is low, but the potential rewards are high.

If you are ready to try Native Advertising contact the experts at Shaw Media Marketing.