Why Growth-Hungry Brands Should Invest in Full-Funnel Paid Social Strategies

Share:

If you’ve been in the business of managing digital advertising budgets for any length of time, you’ve likely been asked to “improve efficiency” at least once (it actually might be the main focus of your job). If you’re fortunate or skilled enough to succeed, you’ve likely learned that the appetite for improved efficiency isn’t satiated with that one bite of success. 

You may soon learn that your company wants to eat the entire pizza pie! — convert every possible customer out there — often without increasing the media budget at all! What does one do in that situation? I’m here to deliver a solution that gives you all the bready, cheesy, saucy goodness your company is craving without having to take the wallet out again.

What Do You Mean By ‘The Whole Pizza’?

There are many people in the world, but only a chunk of those people are viable audiences for a company’s product or service. Among those viable people, some need the product or service right now or in the near future, while some find it relevant but have no immediate need for it. 

So, I want you to think about ALL the people who might benefit from your product. That target audience is your whole pizza. Now, think only about the people with an immediate need for your product. Like pepperonis on a pizza, these people are only a segment of your full audience.

What Do You Mean By ‘Eat’?

Your company is interested in targeting potential customers: that’s a corporate appetite. Therefore, how you ‘eat’ is your targeting strategy! When you lean in to take a bite, what’s your approach? Do you eat all the pepperonis first? Do you avoid the crust? Do you eat entire slices one at a time, savoring all of the flavors? The analogy is quirky, but it works as a visualization of the advertising process. 

Let’s return to the pizza eater who savors all of the pepperonis before the rest of the pizza. In our advertising analogy, these ‘pepperoni-eaters’ represent brands that focus on targeting only people who are actively scouring marketplaces for their products. Perhaps you think only 1 in 100 folks would eat their pizza that way? That may be true in the real world, but we audit many accounts each month, and we see 8 out of every 10 Ecommerce accounts eat their pizza that way—gorging themselves on pepperonis while the rest of the pizza pie goes cold. 

These ecommerce accounts are spending the majority of their media dollars targeting people who are just about to make a purchase in their vertical while leaving a vast chunk of viable customers untargeted by their advertisements. Unfortunately, these brands are often unaware that their competitors are reaping the benefits of full slices while they’re counting their pepperoni conversions.

Why Do They Do That?

I can’t answer for every brand, but I’d attribute the picky-eater approach to a lack of information combined with short-term pressure. Brands and account managers facing challenging short-term performance goals often trust automation to save the day. We all need to remember an automated system needs on-target inputs and excellent oversight to achieve its potential. 

Social media platforms not only curate an attractive environment for your potential customers to spend their time, but they also produce great advertising products to compel potential customers to consider your brand. BUT, social media platforms don’t know your specific business like you do! 

If you tell Meta to find last-click purchasers in the next 7 days, they’ll do their very best to deliver—and will often succeed! But does that satisfy your brand’s appetite to reach its full audience? If you pick all the pepperonis off the pizza and hand them to your stakeholders, will they call that a full meal? If you suspect your stakeholders would still be hungry, let’s outline a solution

So, What Should I Do?

To continue our pizza analogy, how should you increase your pizza intake? In advertising terms, how can you target more viable potential customers for the exact same amount of budget? My long-awaited solution: rethink your campaign objective choices! 

The picky ecommerce brands mentioned earlier (the 8 out of 10 accounts that eat all-pepperoni meals) are spending the majority of their budgets on Sales or Traffic objective campaigns. Within Meta, these campaign objective choices tell the social media platforms, “We want sales.” The platforms do what they’re told—they target folks already very close to buying a product. 

In-market customers can be great audience targets, but they are low-hanging pepperoni, which represents a small slice of the potential customer base. And Meta charges a premium to pursue them for you. We can do better! We can change our campaign objectives to target lots more potential customers. Meta campaign objectives like Reach and Brand Awareness can target 10x viable customers using the exact same budget as Sales and Traffic campaigns. 

You might argue: “But those potential customers you’re reaching aren’t ready to buy! They might not click your ad while they’re relaxing on their phone!” Your argument is correct. But, if your company is hungry for long-term growth, you’ll target a much wider audience of future customers with compelling advertising showcasing your brand and product. That will increase brand awareness and ensure your brand is top of mind when this audience is in the market for your goods or services one day.

This approach works, and we have the case studies to prove it! However, it takes a strong stomach. Let’s explain why…

Read the Customer Success Story Learn how our Facebook and Instagram strategy helped Perfect Keto increase brand term impressions by 26% and brand sales by 72%. Read Now

How Do I Measure?

When you pursue the approach outlined above, your company will drive long-term revenue, but you must embrace the fact that you won’t be able to easily identify all of the new prospects. You’ll be driving new demand; much of that new long-term demand won’t land in your bottom line within 30 days. You’ll want to design measurement and attribution solutions that measure incrementality. That’s not always easy, but if you’re hungry, it’s worth the work.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Adlucent believes in your appetite for success. Don’t settle for a handful of pepperonis when you’re ravenous. We urge you to shift significant chunks of your social media budget to campaign objectives that reach the entire pizza pie of customers—crust-to-crust targeting.

Interested in thinking outside the pizza box and setting up paid social tests that prove outperformance has no limit? Adlucent has a team of data scientists on hand to partner with you and your day-to-day account team to design best-in-class incrementality tests. Reach out to us today; we’ll work as an extension of your team to find a way to satisfy your immense pizza cravings. 

Steve Bonino

Steve Bonino has over 9+ years experience marketing across a wide spectrum of business objectives and verticals. He pushes his team of paid social media planning and buying experts to Make Breakthroughs, Not Bets. Outside of work, Steve loves college football, creative writing projects, and long walks under the blazing Texas sun.