The currency of this game is attention

It’s a battleground for attention on social media, but it’s the most valuable asset. On average, over 1,500 pieces of content compete for your audience’s attention daily. That’s potentially 1,500 different marketers on a social media feed trying to make your audience’s thumbs stop. So what type of ads are most likely to make your audience notice your brand? What are the behavioral triggers that make ads work?

The key to great social advertising is to remember that although you are all about your brand, your audience isn’t.

Marketers are on social media to sell. Consumers, however, are not necessarily on there to buy. They are there for value. Don’t interrupt your audience whilst they are having fun. Create content your audience wants to watch by listening to the unprecedented insight Facebook gives us into people’s lives and psychology, an insight that gives you the opportunity to optimise every ad that is put out. If you’re truly making an ad with good content and taking into account the context in which that content will be consumed, it won’t interrupt your audience and you will have their attention.

You can’t treat paid social like a one night stand.

The number one mistake that brands fall victim to with their paid media budget, is to hard sell and try to close in the first move. Users on social are by default in browsing mode and it takes time and effort to convert them into buying mode. That transition from browsing to buying mode is not going to happen in a single ad. You will be able to get your audience’s attention online in the same way that a (decent) human would offline: by creating an interesting back-and-forth conversation, generating interactions and responding to users. Imagine a user who’s totally unaware of your brand, seeing your ad for the first time on their feed and the first piece of communication that brand has with the user is asking them to buy their product. They would question “Who are you? Where do you come from and why would I buy your product?”. Give your audience reasons to like you. Create conversations with them. Provide them with value, again and again. And then if they show enough interest, go for the sale.

Attention. Get that & everything else clicks. That’s the only behavior you have to trigger in your audience to make your ads work.

Owais Tambe, Paid Media Lead – Wilderness Agency