Successful Native Advertising with Outbrain

I’m running a little Outbrain campaign for a client. In the past, we didn’t get great results, so I reached out to Outbrain and asked them to be on the Superheroes of Marketing podcast and beforehand help me run a successful campaign so I can be positive about it. Sneaky, huh? I got some really great tips right from Will and look forward to having him on the show.

Outbrain Quick Tips for Success:

Promote at least three different pieces of content.
Write five different titles for each.
Use multiple images to test effectiveness.
Remember to go back and adjust geo-targeting once the campaign goes live.
If your budget is eaten up early in the day, lower your bid by about $.02 a day. More dramatic reductions can skew results.

The Purpose of Outbrain:

If exposure and expanding your audience is your goal, consider Outbrain. You can get a huge amount of exposure for a small investment. Clicks are affordable as well (I started at $.60/click). While often the end goal of marketing is leads, this type of marketing is great for say, retargeting. If you want to use retargeting for say, Facebook ads, Outbrain is a good way to expand your reach – allowing you to market to Outbrain visitors when they go to Facebook. Nice!

Types of Content Which Are Great for Outbrain Promotion:

While you might think only of blog posts (landing pages are not generally accepted, but you can have a form on the page), there are some other options which might be very effective for you:

Press releases – after the initial buzz dies down, keep it going with Outbrain.
News articles about your company or product.
User generated content – link to YouTube videos or blog posts – especially great for reviews.
Infographics – make sure they’re embeddable for maximum impact.
Tumblr
Kickstarter or Crowdfunding campaigns.
LinkedIn Publisher articles.

A/B (C/D/E) Testing with Outbrain – It’s The Trust that Matters:

You’re creating five headlines and using different images, so you try things you don’t think will work. I did. And guess what? The one image I thought would flop actually has the best conversion rate by far. It has the company logo on it very clearly. My takeaway? People are suspicious of these “native ads,” so if you give them a clue about who you really are, they seem to be more likely to click.

I’d love to know how it works for you.

Ralph’s Post of the Day:

Video. The Worst Thing For Your Marketing. Maybe.

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Alisa Meredith

I've been creating marketing strategies for years - for both B2C and B2B businesses as co-owner and chief strategist of Scalable Social Media and as a consultant for other agencies. I have a passion for businesses that make the world a better place in ways large and small, and the people who run those businesses are the ones I enjoy working with. I am slightly obsessed with Pinterest. Not just because it is fun, but because it works amazingly well for traffic and lead generation. I also enjoy running, swimming in the ocean, kayaking, and spending time with my two dogs, Pepe and Spike. You'll find these themes make an appearance here. 🙂

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Native Advertising with Outbrain – It’s the Trust that Matters