It’s time to increase your ad engagement

Published: March 21, 2022

Welcome to Get In My Basket, the newsletter that will tell you everything you need to know about digital marketing for direct to consumer brands.

In this newsletter, you will find insider knowledge, tips and tricks to get your brand into more baskets.

In this issue you will find:

The new brand that is making bespoke clothes fit EVERY time
Top tips to make your creatives perform better
Social commerce is on the rise
Prada’s Slam Dunk Creative

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What’s HOT?!?! This section of the newsletter showcases brands and businesses doing something innovative in their space.

What we love more than anything here, in case you haven’t noticed from our previous “What’s Hots”, is finding brands who are disruptive to their core and truly shaking up their industry. Reinventing the wheel when it comes to a product/service that has been stuck in recurring, ordinary ways. Pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. Spoke is a DTC brand that truly embodies all the qualities that we look for.

In 2014 Spoke set out to create a product that is different. Recognising that men’s clothing had two extremes; high-street, ill fitting and poor quality or tailor made, long lead-time and expensive, it set to close the gap and solve the problem that many men were facing.

Spoke has two focuses; fitting well and looking good. They cut a wide range of sizes (more than you’ll find elsewhere) and finish them to each order. With each order being unique to the recipient, the high level of customisation ensures that the fit is just right and therefore long lasting. In order to make sure that they look good, they focus on a small range and do it right. Disregarding trends and specialising in a classic style, their focus allows premium quality and timeless design.

UGC or keep it pro?

UGC…? What is it? Well to be honest you already know the answer. User-Generated Content. You have most likely done it yourself already, whether it’s an Instagram story or a TikTok you have created. In the digital marketing space, we look at this type of creative as a way of current customers or Influencers generating creative for product or brand.

What do we class as “Pro” content, well this is mostly considered as professionally shot content, whether it be an image or video, that digital agencies like 303 would create for a product or brand. Pro content is easy to spot, you see it everywhere, on social, TV, out of home, you name it, Pro content is there.

So, what’s best? And what we mean by ‘best’ is what works when it comes to digital ads. We’re talking, what type of creative works best to convert and engage an audience?

Well, the truth of the matter is that there is really no right or wrong answer here.

Last week, you may have caught our newsletter on Whitelisting, a highly effective form of advertising used within Meta where Influencers promote their own UGC through their pages to a brand’s audience. This is an area where the UGC will always out perform the professionally created content. However, that’s not the only way to use UGC.

It really comes down to your approach for your Paid social Ads, your audiences, the funnel that you are trying to drive them through, and at what point different creatives are used within that funnel.

We want to keep this simple, so here are the best and worst practices when it comes to using UGC and Professional creative.

UGC Best Practices:

– Using customer’s video testimonials that have been filmed on a phone are seen as trusted and natural. Audiences are always looking for the truth when it comes to buying a new brand product.

– Phone images blend in with users’ normal feeds – we have mentioned this before but you want to try and soft sell with your audience, simple phone images blend into a normal Instagram feed and are more likely to be engaged with.

– Use familiar faces – trying to get Influencers or recognisable faces to work with a DTC brand can be tricky, even more so when you want them to come down to a photoshoot for a full day. Using UGC that they can create in their own time makes getting the creative a lot faster and easier for both parties.

– Don’t just get the same content – testing is very important when it comes to paid social, often with UGC you end up just getting the same 1-minute testimonial video from everyone. Be smart and organised with this. Having multiple different creatives can be a massive help when it comes to performance, for example, asking 5 influencers to shoot a 1-minute video might not be as effective as having: 1x 15-second video on how to use the product, 1x amazing lifestyle image, 1 x short on-trend TikTok, 1x Carousel of different elements of the product, 1x 45-second video that can be used as a story ad. You get the point right? Plan how you are going to gain UGC and don’t be boring!

Things to be aware of:

– Make sure you brief – following on from the point above, working with different Influencers can mean that you don’t get what you need from the content when you brief it, make sure it’s clear and easy to understand.

– Mixed messaging – UGC can sometimes be very unclear, and so it is highly likely that the social ad won’t perform and you’ll end up thinking it is something else, and not the content. So make sure the content is clear on what it is trying to sell.

– Organic doesn’t mean bad – you do want natural creative, but it still needs to look epic, be good quality, and be engaging.

“Pro” Creatives: The Best Way To Use

– USPs are key – When using Pro creatives, you can push more of a hard sell, and make the most of it.

– More control – You will have more control over the outcome over the creative, unlike with UGC where you might not be able to control the standard.

– Versatility – Images, graphics, long-form and short-form videos all can be created professionally, allowing you to have more creatives to work with.

– A strong reflection of your brand – Well made professional creatives can not only showcase your brand’s quality but also show the care you place into all areas of your brand.

Things to be aware of:

– Hard selling can be bad – Audiences have become aware of hard selling ads, and they can sometimes be spotted a mile off, and as a result, not engaged with.

– Overdone – Do your creatives look just like every other brand? Has the creative been remade multiple times?

– Doesn’t feel organic – Most social media platforms are meant to be based around the community, trends and connecting with other people. If the ads don’t feel like they fit that purpose they are likely not to engage with it.

As you’ve just read, there’s no right and no wrong answer when it comes to using UGC or Pro creatives, you just have to make sure what you choose is right for your audience and brand. Need some help making that decision? Get in touch.

One in four UK consumers spend more than five hours a day on social media
By 2025, social commerce is expected to account for 17% of all eCommerce spending
LinkedIn is testing the option of turning off all political posts to some users in the US
YouTube ads’ annualised run rate has outpaced Netflix for the first time
49% of TikTok users say that the app is a good place to discover something new and 30% of TikTok users discover products through ads within their feeds
Youtube daily live-stream watch time more than tripled between January 2020 and December 2021

To finish off our newsletter we want to highlight some of the best creatives that we have seen recently, and tell you why we think they are a slam dunk win.