In-depth analysis of information flow delivery, the key method to rapidly increase ROI

What exactly is advertising, trying to convince you to buy something you don't need? Or give you what you need?

The former is the era of supply shortage, and the latter is the era of overproduction and consumption upgrading. Should the information received by users be the same? Or should it be different? The former is the era of big brands , big media and big channels, while the latter is the era of the Internet and data. The idea of ​​traditional advertising is the former, and data-driven information flow advertising is the latter.

It first appeared on mainstream foreign social giants in 2006, and then domestic social media and news clients also launched information flow ads. It is integrated into the information received by users in a very natural way.

For example, the Baidu information flow , Weibo Fans ads, WeChat Moments ads , Tencent News , and the native ads on the homepage of Toutiao that we often see are all information flow ads.

Of course, among the current platforms, Zhihu is also an information flow platform with high value.

Ferris wheel ticketing and Soda cans Zhihu information flow ads

iFLYTEK launched Live, and Armani Beauty and Siemens China used Zhihu native articles and other forms of advertising .

According to official data released in March 2017, the number of Instagram community users worldwide has exceeded 600 million, and the number of monthly active advertisers has exceeded 1 million, while the data for the same period in 2016 was only 200,000, a five-fold increase! This is mainly due to information flow advertising.

Back to the Chinese market, according to a report by iResearch Consulting , the size of the mobile advertising market reached 175 billion yuan in 2016 and is expected to reach 264.8 billion yuan in 2017. Among them, the information flow advertising market size is 32.57 billion yuan, which is in a rapid development stage and is expected to reach 55.7 billion yuan in 2018.

So what are the common forms of mobile advertising ?

Mobile advertising includes: native advertising, screen projection advertising, open screen advertising, interstitial advertising, point wall , search advertising, etc.

Native advertising has been the focus of the digital marketing industry since it was proposed in 2013. Simply put, advertising is integrated with content, making advertising a part of the content.

Native advertising comes in many forms, including information flow, video, in-app function implantation, emoticon implantation, game level implantation, etc. Information flow advertising is a type of native advertising and is the most well-known.

So what are the characteristics of information flow advertising?

Understand real users through a highly sophisticated labeling system, including their basic attributes, media behavior, user environment, user status, business interests, user behavior , etc.

Basic attributes: gender, age, occupation, education, permanent address, etc.

User status: marital status, consumption level, student, etc.

User behavior: e-commerce shopping behavior, APP behavior, PC behavior

User environment: device model, LBS information, networking method, operator

Business interests: travel, shopping, luxury goods, cars

Taking Moments ads as an example, information flow ads support targeting based on attributes such as region, gender, age, mobile phone (brand model, mobile phone system and network environment), marital status, education level, interest tags (commercial interests/APP interests), LBS, keyword targeting, and remarketing.

For example, during the launch of a new Mercedes-Benz car, information flow advertising can acquire Mercedes-Benz user groups based on online user behaviors such as browsing, searching, following, and participating in discussions. It can also acquire highly relevant groups that may be interested in the new car by integrating data from third-party vertical platforms. Combined with the tag system, it can provide precisely targeted information, such as user mobile phone numbers, device numbers, etc. Draw a user's "behavioral scenario portrait". This allows for precise reach and internal conversion .

In addition, information flow advertising supports more precise strong exposure and wider coverage, can achieve progressive follow-up investment and secondary marketing, can target different decision-making groups, deliver different advertisements for the same product, and can also reach highly relevant people in vertical industries.

Here are two excellent examples of information flow advertising

Many foreign brand information flow advertising cases, in addition to using label combination strategies to achieve precise delivery, also add a lot of interesting interactive forms.

1. In the Instagram feed ads, the Lay’s potato chips team hopes to reach millennial consumers and encourage them to participate in the Flavor Swap event, taste the classic and new flavors of Lay’s potato chips, and vote for their favorite flavor.

The overall goal of this marketing campaign is to increase offline sales at a lower cost per impression. The Flavor Swap marketing campaign was launched on Facebook and Instagram, and 4 Video Ads were placed to compare classic flavor potato chips with new flavors to encourage popular voting. Compared to running Facebook ads alone, adding Instagram ads increased reach by 5% , reduced cost per impression by 3%, and increased sales by 5%.

2. Cedar Point, an Ohio theme park, promoted Halloween discounts on Snapchat , using the 24-hour disappearing feature to allow users to focus and observe the ghosts that quickly pass by. Successful screenshots would earn generous rewards. The ad attracted over 140,000 clicks and increased the brand’s engagement rate by 233% .

Native advertising on Snapchat

Of course, it is not enough to just use precise targeting and interesting interactive content to deliver ads. You also need to understand how to increase conversion rates and reduce customer acquisition costs. Generally speaking, we attribute the effectiveness of information flow advertising to the following two key points:

Reduce customer acquisition costs: Use fixed advertising costs to bring in more customers, thereby generating more final transaction conversions.

Improve conversion rate: Make a larger proportion of customers brought in by the advertising fees generate transactions, thereby increasing revenue.

Therefore, how to reduce customer acquisition costs and increase click-through rates has become a headache for most information flow advertising optimizers . Situations such as " tried many methods, but the cost cannot be reduced " and " landing pages have been modified repeatedly, but the conversion rate is still shockingly low " often occur.

So, what should we do?

1. Detailed analysis of the relevant factors of these two indicators

At present, most mainstream information flow delivery platforms are divided into CPC billing mode and CPM billing mode. Here we only talk about CPC billing mode:

Customer acquisition cost = advertising amount / number of visits = single click price * click volume / click volume * arrival rate = single click price / arrival rate

From this we can see that after breaking down the customer acquisition cost, what we can directly control is the click price and the arrival rate.

Click price = next person’s bid * next person’s click rate / own click rate + 0.01

Arrival rate = website visits / clicks

From this, we can improve the website browsing experience (speed) to ensure the arrival rate, increase the click-through rate of advertisements, thereby reducing the click price, so that fixed delivery can get more clicks, thereby reducing customer acquisition costs.

Conversion rate = number of orders / number of visits = number of visits * consultation rate (lead retention rate) * order rate / number of visits = consultation rate (lead retention rate) * order rate

It can be concluded that the determining factors of conversion rate are in the sales process. The online consultation rate (lead retention rate) and order conversion rate determine how many fixed visiting customers can be converted into consumer customers.

In summary, under the CPC billing model, the click-through rate, online consultation rate (lead retention rate), and order conversion rate determine the effectiveness of advertising.

2. Comprehensively consider the impact of various indicators

Many times, poor results are often caused by a combination of factors, not just one factor. We mentioned above that the determining indicators of effectiveness are click-through rate, lead rate and order conversion rate. So what kind of influencing indicators are behind these three indicators?

Click-through rate: traffic accuracy (platform, targeting), ad style (large picture, three pictures, small picture, video), display position (before the test, at the end, list page, content page), copywriting , and pictures

Lead rate: traffic accuracy (platform, targeting), copywriting, landing page guidance

Order conversion rate: activities, landing pages, traffic accuracy, sales ability

There are at least a dozen influencing factors in total, so there must be a certain logic when looking at the results. I call the three indicators of click-through rate, lead rate, and order conversion rate the determining indicators of the effect, and the related indicators under these three indicators are called deep influence indicators . When analyzing the reasons for poor results, first look at the determining indicators, and then the deep influence indicators.

3. Repeated A/B testing

In the process of delivering information flow advertising, the most critical factor is actually creativity, that is, the title , pictures and style of the copy. The only way to write good ideas is to try. The reason is that what you think is good may not have a high click-through rate. Maybe you have learned the copywriting method of a big V , and the click-through rate is indeed good, but the conversion effect is very poor. What should you do? Write many, many creative ideas, use many kinds of illustrations, and conduct A/B testing continuously. After having a certain data foundation, you can get more reliable results. What kind of product, what kind of selling point, what kind of copywriting, and what kind of illustrations will have the best effect.

The key to A/B testing is to keep all other variables (targeting, ranking, bidding, landing page, etc.) unchanged except for changing the creative, and to test a large number of them in a short period of time to get a result. The test should compare at least 10 sets of creatives with different selling points and different pictures.

The reason why A/B testing is difficult to use is that most of us can hardly ensure that the test results are not affected by other factors (competitive environment, rankings), so A/B testing must be done in a short time (about 30 minutes) and in large quantities (more than 1,000 clicks).

In addition, A/B testing is not only used for creative testing, but can also be used for population, ranking, landing pages and other aspects.

4. Improve the delivery method

So, when you have done a lot of delivery, conducted many A/B tests, and found the factors that affect the results, how can you improve your delivery methods?

Click-through rate:

1) The account structure clearly divides the population, targets precise groups of people while ensuring sufficient traffic, and gives more sufficient budgets and better advertising positions to people with high conversion rates .

2) Choose creatives with high click-through rates and good conversion rates, and extend them in a variety of writing styles based on these selling points. It should be noted that the higher the click-through rate, the better the creative. It cannot be too rigid (the click-through rate cannot be increased), nor can it be a clickbait title (clicks from inaccurate groups will result in a waste of advertising fees). It needs to have a prominent product selling point and be written in a soft way .

3) Keep the bid price within an acceptable range and improve the click-through rate through other means to obtain a better ranking.

4) Style and pictures are important factors affecting click-through rate. Generally speaking, the click-through rate of large pictures will be higher than other styles, but a good copy can make up for the shortcomings of the style . At the same time, the picture matching skills require A/B testing to determine the appropriate picture type, background color, etc.

At this point, the basic logical level of how to achieve effective information flow advertising has been roughly explained. The history and trends of information flow, the advertising forms of information flow, population targeting, creative writing methods, content gameplay and production, A/B testing and other contents have all been involved and shared. However, the entire information flow delivery is not something that can be explained clearly in this article. I am just throwing out some ideas and will stop there.

Source: Aichi SEM