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Extreme response

Ten ways to create high-conversion digital ads

Alisa Cromer
Posted

For digital campaigns, advertisers are more willing to “buy the customer” with great offers or “free” coupons in exchange for information. But there is an art to the outrageous offer.

David Fowler, CEO of AdsUP, which designs digital ads and landing pages for media companies,  is an expert on creating ads with high-power conversion rates. Here are ten rules for creating outrageous offers that out-perform, compiled from his workshop at the SNA Sales BootCamp:

1.Think of ads as “an ethical bribes” to the customer. An outrageous offer is ‘an ethical bribe the target audience finds so irresistible they take an action.”   The main focus is on the appeal of the offer, to “buy the customer at the lowest possible price”. Great bribes will work across multi-mediea including print, broadcast and social networks.

2.Confirm the purpose of the campaign: To create a database of new customers.
The biggest different between legacy and digital ads is interactivity. Print and broadcast which drive viewers to the phones, while digital ads drive the customer to click to a page that captures customer data. In most cases, the customer is exchanging their own customer data for the reward. The customer may get something free by coupon, but the value of that customer is the ability to target them for future sales which may total in the hundreds over the course of a year.

Ads that build databases create an offer in exchange for information, and don't sell the product directly. To agree on the key purpose, discuss how the customer will use the database to convert to sales, not only during the campaign but also  over a year or a lifetime.

An example is the Einstein bagel's Free Bagel campaign, which was interspersed with coupons that are not quite free but get to use the name: Buy one get one free, or Free with $2 coffee. By offering the coupon on Facebook - you have to be a fan to sign up -  Einstein increased its fans from 4,700 to 336,000 nationwide, staggering the coupon dates and times throughout its network of stores to control traffic. 

What's in it for Einstein? We don't know their margins, but let's say the internal cost of the Bagel is 50 cents, and 50% of customers buy a $2.50 cup of coffee too, the chain is still ahead by more than $100,000, plus has database of 336,000 people it knows likes bagels. Since the offer immediate went viral on the internet, Einstein essentially used more of its advertising budget to buy the customers.

While some ads take direct ordering (some restaurants and most hotels) from the landing page or pose click to call options, aiming for the big response works in 100% of cases.

3. Make offers that only look outrageous.  An irresistable “bribe” should equal a $10 to $1 ratio in favor of the client. This is the level of the perceived bribe necessary to get a customer to take an action. 

From the custom’s perspective a good offer looks like you (the small businessperson) are “fleecing yourself and giving away the farm. Fowler advocates putting the customer on the winning end of the transaction to get huge results for advertisers.  

Note: Ikea beefed up its Facebook fans with sweepstakes giving away $500 Gift Certificates... and spawning an industry of Facebook scammers that promised $1000 gift cards. Local offers are more credible, so make sure visitors don't feel tricked.


4. Use the three most effective “bribe offers”
Fowlers gives several kinds of effective "bribes" including the curiosity builder, the reason, and the irresistable offer. 

The curiosity builder is a tricky one to use but effective if you hit the right emotional nerve. These include ads like “My husband can’t keep his hands off me”, “See who’s on Match.com for free” and “Is your spouse cheating? Take this test.” People love games and quizzes.

curiosity builder offer

If your team has developed a great campaign based on this premise, send us an email to alisacromer@gmail.com.

Next, the “Reason why” offer is sometimes in order to "avoide problems or pain", and is often used to sell financial products, ie “We’ll wire you $1500 in an hour” or “For instant credit click here.” Central to these campaigns is pain-point of the customer and using targeting to find them. An example on this site that incorporates pain-avoidance and the irresistiable offer is the “Re-fi round-up” in which a Credit Union in Odessa, Texas swooped up consumers who wanted to re-fi their auto-loans by offering a 3.9% financing package. The sales team at Oaoa.com used Yahoo behaviorial targeting to find people who had been looking for refinancing option.

Another “reason why” offer on this site is the ‘guaranteed lowest price” that an Ohio Jetta Dealer used here, or a used car dealer that allows you to return the car within 60 days.

Here are two more:



The “in your face bribe offer” is the easiest to create, but the key is to work with your client to understand the value of a new customer, and the most aggressive amount the advertiser is willing to "pay" to bribe the customer to take an initial action.  

Offers that traditionally work include: Dinner for 2 for touring a home or test-driving a car, free cut with color, or a free car or pool with a home purchase, and Buy one Get One Free restaurant specials.  A number of advertisers  offer free services in return for the customers data. Here are a couple from Fowler's presentation:

bribe/offer ad

One note about free offers, many customers feel tricked if the click through leads to an overly long data capture form or contest.  Local ads have more credibility so make sure they live up to a high standard! 

5. Use bribe/offer as the headline

That's simple, right? One fortunate aspect of digital ads is that there is no question about the headline: It is the offer, period. There is no room for anything else. To train your team to come up with short headlines, and Fowler suggests creating a few at sales meetings.   For example, tell them the offer is a free round of golf and free lunch at a premier resort. Ask them each to create headlines, then discuss the headlines they write for which ones are most appealing.

A soft-sell but effective headline  for a new home builder on this site  targeted visiting snowbirds to Florida with a picture of a resort like pool area in a rich media ad: “Join us this weekend for live music poolside 1 to 4 p.m.” It went on to say they also get a free pool with their new home. Some a/b testing switching the head and subhead would be interesting! 

6. Make the  “call to action”  a simply worded command that offers instant gratification
All banner ads need some kind of imperative command to click and offer instant gratification. Our favorite  on this site is  an ad for a flight school which commands,  “Click here for ultimate freedom” (the offer was a $99 “discovery flight”). Studies show imperative verb goes first for highest click through rates.  



Note: Don’t put phone numbers directly on ads unless they are click to call.

7.Take control of landing pages.  Landing pages are key to conversions and your company should be able  on the fly, and include at least two conversion tools, in a reasonable – 48 hour – turn around. If not, Fowler's company AdUp will build pages for about $75 each; the going retail rate is  about a $200 one-time  charge to the client for creating the page.  The rule is, don't send a great offer back to a weak or irrelevant page on a web site. The ad/email/text-message has to click through to a page that exactly matches the offer and converts. 

Customers also respond to ads in different ways, click to call, calling from a land line, e-mailing directly from the landing page or printing or sending a coupon to mobile phone. A campaign should have at least two options on the landing page that make sense.

Here's an example of a typical landing page, also called a "squeeze page" or "data collection page"  created by AdsUp: 



8.Train your clients.  Digital advertisers generally  have less resistance to creating the outrageous offer required to “buy customers,”  since the costs of the campaigns are lower, or percieved to be lower. BUT it is still an education process that begins with the initial questioning. Sales reps need to find out the average sale (including all products purchased with the order) and margin of different products and services, what sells the most, and the total value of a customer over a year and over a lifetime. What about e-mail opens and conversions? Establishing the value of the customer is key to training the advertiser to use offers that "look"- to the customer -  like it's almost too good to be true.

9.Use extreme offers to improve legacy media ads

As Fowler points out legacy ads are direct reponse ads, that is, they send the audience to the phone, car or internet and should use these same principles. His best clients routinely turn down print ads whose offers are just not outrageous enough to work.

Here are some of Fowler’s examples of high powered print ads that convert easily to multi-media:

print ads that convert

As you can see, all three of these ads can use the Headline/Offer in a banner ad. The other information can go on the landing page. 

10. Track exceptional ad campaigns. A best practice is not only to track best ad campaigns for clients, but also to share them with other ad directors company wide and with sales people.  An easy way to do this is for managers to collect the data, write a few sentences about the response, and send that to creative to combine on a testimonial page. Advertisers do not have to give permission if the testimonials are for internal use and training. Powerpoint training at sales meetings, and giving the reps these campaigns to use when pitching new prospects can be done without an official testimonial or compromising advertiser secrets.  

Summary: Outrageous offers and other great campaign ideas not only work for banner ads, they also work on Twitter, Facebook, mobile and e-mail. But first, you have to have the campaign idea. That is why it's essential to keep standards high and focus on creative more than ever before. Creating great campaign ideas is just one more critical step in a holistic approach to tranforming from a legacy media company to a multi-media company, or from a pureplay start-up to sustainable business model.

 David Fowler Thanks for these valuable insights to David Fowler, Ads-up, which provides creative ads and landing pages as a service to media companies, as well as consulting with companies on improving ad design.  If you would like to work with AdsUp, you can reach David Folwer at  gofinddavid@gmail.com or  760.822.2133. 

To recognize and promote great campaigns created by your company on LocalMediaInsider.com,  send an email to alisacromer@localmediainsider.com. We publish Top Ad Performing ad campaigns in the home page rotator on a weekly basis. 

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