How to improve conversions with Internet advertising!

During the epidemic, it was not suitable to go out, so I spent a lot more time at home, so I watched "The Legend of Bruce Lee" again. The plot was quite exciting, but there was one thing I had to complain about, and it was related to Internet advertising .

I think the following situation will drive many people crazy. When you are staring at the screen intently, a patch advertisement suddenly pops up, and an episode of a TV series is repeated no less than 5 times.

The repeated message in the video is "8 pieces for 99 yuan". Clothes that cost a dozen yuan each are indeed cheap, and the video also mentions product features such as "good elasticity, no pilling, and fashionable".

I do remember its characteristics, but will it make people excited? To be honest, I wanted to smash my computer at that time. I didn't have any good feelings towards the product, so how could I have the urge to place an order?

So, frankly speaking, this kind of repetitive patch advertising is meaningless, and the advertising fees are probably all wasted.

In addition to this form, other major forms of Internet advertising include paid ranking ads on search engines such as Baidu and 360; and ads on content information platforms such as Weibo and Douyin.

Of course, the scope of Internet advertising is far more than the above. You can understand it as advertising on other Internet platforms except for specialized advertising platforms.

They almost all have one characteristic, which is that they are difficult to remember. Users will forget them within a few hours or even a few days.

Think about the advertisements you have seen online in the past few days. Can you still clearly remember their appeal? Except for those very well-known brands, because they themselves have memorable points.

The rest will probably be forgotten, and even if you have any impression, it is vague and not enough to support you to place an order now.

For some high-priced products with long decision-making process, making the audience remember them is still the most important thing for advertising. They can’t remember, and when they open the search box, they don’t know what to enter.

However, for most brands, Internet advertising is a hurdle that cannot be avoided, because consumers are active on Internet platforms, and if you do not advertise on Internet platforms, you will lose an opportunity to get to know them and sell products to them.

Therefore, this article will discuss the following two issues to help you better understand Internet advertising and maximize its effectiveness.

1. Why is it so difficult for audiences to remember Internet advertisements?
2. I can’t even remember it, how can I achieve conversion effect?

1. Why is it so difficult for audiences to remember Internet advertisements?

When it comes to not being able to remember, our first reaction must be that now the media is so fragmented and information is so explosive. From waking up in the morning to going to bed at night every day, we receive too much information through different media. It’s too difficult to remember.

Indeed, the audience's distracted attention and time make it much more difficult for them to remember an advertising message. However, this is only one factor at best.

The more critical factor is the conflict between the Internet media environment and the nature of advertising, and the conflict between accurately conveying advertising appeals and the audience's willingness to accept them .

In order to resolve these two conflicts, many Internet advertisements will cater to the characteristics of the media and be made into content or information to increase the audience's willingness to accept.

1. The conflict between the Internet media environment and the nature of advertising

What is the biggest feature of the Internet media? They are more than just media. For brand owners, they are just media, but for users, they are also products that undertake specific tasks that users need to complete.

On video websites, users go there to watch videos; on information platforms, users go there to read related information. They expect valuable and interesting content.

What is advertising? Jiang Nanchun, the founder of Focus Media, once said that advertising is essentially anti-human. No one likes watching ads. Just think about the brainwashing advertisements that are everywhere.

Therefore, few people dare to tell you confidently that they spend several hours on Douyin just to watch advertisements of brand owners, unless this person is engaged in advertising or marketing.

This creates a conflict between the Internet media environment and the nature of advertising. The appearance of advertising information will interrupt and interfere with users' tasks on the Internet media .

2. Accurately convey the conflict between advertising appeal and acceptance

If an advertising message wants to have better effects and waste less advertising costs, it must meet two requirements: the advertising appeal must be accurate and the audience's willingness to accept must be high .

If the audience doesn't want to watch it, no matter how creative your advertisement is or how accurate its appeal is, it will be in vain.

However, it is often difficult for Internet advertising to have the best of both worlds. Instead, it tends to be at two extremes: the more precise the ad's appeal, the less the audience wants to watch it; on the contrary, users can enjoy watching ads that do not have clear appeals.

If BOSS Zhipin's advertisement " Looking for a job, talk directly to the boss " is disseminated through the Internet, all the advertising fees will probably be wasted.

The reason for this situation is that, in addition to users' instinctive dislike of watching advertisements, users have considerable initiative and control over the Internet media. If they don't want to see information, they can scroll past it or click the close button. If they really can't block it, they can also choose to become a member to remove advertisements.

This creates a conflict between accurately conveying advertising appeals and the audience's willingness to accept. Accurate advertising appeals will weaken the audience's willingness to accept information .

3. Cater to the characteristics of the media to create content or information to increase the audience's willingness to accept

How to resolve these two conflicts? Brand owners will cater to the characteristics of the media and put advertising information into the form of content or information to increase the audience's willingness to accept it.

In the circle of friends, they will integrate advertisements into their own lives; on Douyin and Kuaishou, they will turn advertisements into useful or interesting video content; on news and information platforms, they will turn advertisements into eye-catching news.

It has to be said that the rise of Internet media has inspired a large number of outstanding advertising creative talents who can always make advertisements interesting or useful content.

Watch this commercial and you may not be able to stop watching it. Many netizens said that if all commercials looked like this, who would want to become a member?

The biggest advantage of this type of content-based advertising is that it can increase the audience's willingness to accept it. Watching the advertisement is like watching a comedy, which makes people unable to stop.

Although it can accurately convey the product's selling points, the user's attention to the selling points will be weakened because the previous preparations are too long and exciting, and most of the users will remember the plot.

Friends who watch Douyin can pay attention to the fact that almost all the advertisements that can keep you watching have an attractive plot and are made into content that you are willing to watch.

Assuming the content is 30 seconds, there are often only a few seconds to convey the advertising appeal, and the information intensity and density are not enough for consumers to remember it.

After reading this, your biggest question may be:

Since consumers cannot remember Internet advertisements, how can we achieve conversion effects?

2. How can I achieve conversion effect if I can’t even remember it?

Although the characteristics of Internet media make it difficult for audiences to remember the appeal of advertisements, purchase conversion can still be achieved if the following two points are done well.

1. Achieve instant conversion

If we divide advertising effects according to timeliness, we can divide advertising into immediate conversion and delayed conversion.

The so-called immediate conversion means that after consumers see the advertisement, they complete the purchase decision such as interest-desire-trust-order; the so-called delayed conversion means that after consumers see the advertisement, they do not place an order immediately, but remember the advertising information first and then buy it when they need it later.

Obviously, with the development of Internet technology and the rise of Internet media, support has been provided for the instant conversion of Internet advertising, and purchase links and QR codes can be inserted anywhere in advertisements.

Whether it is a search engine ad, an ad on TikTok, or an ad in the information flow of the circle of friends, after being seen by the audience, if there is no further contact with them, the opportunity for conversion is lost.

Therefore, the task of advertising information is very important, especially for those brands that are not well-known. Advertising information needs to complete the task of making consumers go from awareness to purchase within a few seconds or minutes.

So, how can we increase the instant conversion rate? You need to answer at least the following 6 questions.

Crowd question: Is the audience the target audience?

Cognitive question: What is your product?

Motivation question: Why should I buy you?

Trust Issue: Why should I trust you?

Threshold question: Can I try it first?

Pressing Question: Why should I buy it now?

I suggest you read the above 6 questions several times. Let’s take a look at the patch ad at the beginning and see if it solves the above 6 problems.

Crowd issue: Men's short-sleeved shirts, simple and fashionable, which is in line with my gender preferences. This is the absolute advantage of Internet advertising, which can judge users' consumption habits based on their behavioral tag data.

Cognitive problem: What we sell are T-shirts for summer wear, which are elastic, non-pilling, simple and fashionable, which is easy to understand. In addition to solving the problem, you can also use the F (attribute) A (function) B (benefit) rule to convey the product benefits. The corresponding benefit for good elasticity can be written as " free to control and release without restraint ", and the corresponding benefit for simple and fashionable can be written as " find your confidence in a T-shirt ".

Motivation: 99 yuan for 8 pieces, cheapness can also motivate consumers to buy, but it can be optimized to less than 15 yuan per piece, making cheapness easier to perceive.

Trust issue: Free shipping nationwide and payment upon delivery. This kind of commitment is trustworthy.

Threshold issue: Products like clothes have a low unit price, can be returned, and have no threshold.

Urgency issue : The sale is not urgent enough. It might be better to change it to a countdown, or it can only be available today, etc.

So, this advertisement can basically solve the above six problems, but it made two very serious mistakes.

First, the media was chosen incorrectly , and interstitial advertising was chosen during the video, which interrupted and interfered with the user's task of watching TV, resulting in almost zero user willingness to accept the advertisement. Another thing is that even if users want to buy it later, they will not be able to find the purchase link because it does not leave other information such as the brand name.

Second, it costs 99 yuan for 8 pieces, which does not take the user’s dressing habits into consideration . What are you going to do with 8 such short-sleeved shirts? Is it used to take up space? It would be better to change to 3 pieces for 50 yuan , because having three or four short-sleeved shirts to replace in a summer is enough. When I see that I can buy 8 short-sleeved shirts for 99 yuan, I really don’t dare to buy it.

For low-priced, short-decision products like this, it is okay. As long as the above 6 problems are solved, the immediate conversion rate will not be too bad.

But how to further improve the conversion rate? And for those high-frequency consumption products, how can we achieve multiple conversions?

What's more, for those high-priced products that require long decision-making time, it is almost impossible to get consumers to place an order the first time they see you.

So, how to solve these problems? The answer is to achieve multiple touches of advertising information .

2. Make multiple contacts

If consumers don’t buy after seeing your ad the first time, it may be because they don’t have the demand. That’s okay. Just keep pushing the ads to them. There will always be a time when they need the products and you will be there too.

If he can't remember, remind him from time to time. Don't wait until the consumer needs you and finds you gone. The key to multiple reach is whether you can continuously produce content that they are happy to consume .

Many brand owners were keen on Weibo and WeChat earlier, but now they are keen on opening accounts on platforms such as Douyin, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu to operate, continuously publishing content information in order to achieve multiple reach of information.

Advertising is the art of repetition. Repetition can generate purchasing power, and every repetition is a reinforcement of consumer demand.

Why do many brand owners who claim to have spent tens of millions on advertising still fail to achieve any results?

The biggest reason is that the net is cast too wide and too many media are used. It seems that there are huge number of exposures, but when averaged out to each person, the number of reaches is too small, and naturally no conversion occurs.

Fortunately, the cost of Internet media has been reduced. In the past, the average exposure on TV, in newspapers, or outdoors would cost a lot of money.

But today, you can completely hold your users in your own hands. With just one WeChat account, you can reach them multiple times a day at almost no cost.

Why are more and more companies paying attention to private domain operations? In addition to the gradual loss of traffic dividends and the increasing traffic costs. The main reason is that Internet advertising has poor memorability. If there is no immediate conversion, the traffic will be wasted .

What should I do then? It doesn’t matter if you can’t convert immediately. Just bring consumers into your own private pool, reach them multiple times for free, and convert them slowly.

Perfect Diary, a dark horse brand in the cosmetics industry in recent years, has established hundreds of personal accounts with its Little Wanzi persona. Assuming that each account has 3,000 followers, the number of fans is over one million. Even if it only sends four messages a day, each person will be reached at least dozens of times in a month.

Seeing this, you may think that instant conversion + multiple touches are too troublesome. Is there a more direct method?

That is to firmly occupy a position in the minds of consumers. Brands that have super memory in the minds of consumers do not need to engage in private domain operations, because consumers will think of related brands when they have related needs, such as the safe Bull sockets, Wanglaoji that is afraid of getting angry, and Feihe milk powder suitable for the physique of Chinese babies.

This also seems to give us an inspiration: either use memory to drive consumers to buy, or use instant conversion + multiple touches to drive consumers to buy.

Of course, the approach a brand chooses is influenced by many factors, such as product category, brand development stage, financial and material resources of the brand owner, etc. This article will not discuss this.

3. Final Thoughts

The rise and prosperity of Internet media has indeed brought great opportunities to brand owners, such as precision marketing communication, spontaneous communication, cross-circle communication, low-cost communication, etc.; but at the same time, it also has some limitations, it comes and goes quickly, and consumers cannot remember the advertising appeals firmly.

In addition to media fragmentation and information explosion, the more critical factor that causes this limitation is the conflict between the Internet media environment and the nature of advertising, and the conflict between accurately conveying advertising appeals and the audience's willingness to accept.

In order to resolve these two conflicts, Internet advertising often caters to the characteristics of the media to create content or information in order to increase the audience's willingness to accept, but doing so will weaken the advertising appeal.

Therefore, if Internet advertising wants to achieve conversion effects, it must achieve instant conversion and multiple touches.

Author: Qi Shao

Source: Qishaomkt