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Marketing for Finance and FinTech Companies: Strategies for Success

The finance and FinTech industries are transformative sectors that play a significant role in shaping the Canadian and global economy. Fuelled by constant innovation, robust regulatory oversight, and a paramount need for customer trust, these sectors present a unique and challenging landscape for marketing. 

This article, drawing on our WhiteOwl team’s in-depth experience and understanding of these areas, aims to equip you with ideas for effective strategies for finance and FinTech marketing.

Understanding the finance and FinTech landscape

The finance industry, encompassing banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, is a crucial part of the economy and is currently undergoing significant digital transformation. Parallelly, the FinTech sector is burgeoning, as innovative startups leverage technology to revolutionize traditional financial services, making them more accessible and convenient.

Marketing for these industries presents unique challenges, such as rapid evolution, regulatory compliance and the need to simplify complex financial concepts. Yet, these challenges offer opportunities for marketers who can effectively navigate the regulatory landscape, simplify finance and FinTech messaging, and build consumer trust.

Tailoring your marketing approach

Successful marketing finance and financial technology companies begins with understanding market segmentation. Recognizing the diversity in their clients’ needs, from personal finance management to complex corporate financial services, allows for the design of tailored strategies. Once you identify the unique requirements and pain points of their clients, you can create compelling value propositions.

This understanding is crucial in crafting targeted messaging and positioning strategies. Effective messaging communicates the unique value a company provides and resonates with its target audience. A strong positioning strategy helps a company stand out in a crowded market, thus enhancing brand recognition and market share.

Leveraging digital channels

In today’s era of digital transformation, digital marketing plays an integral role for finance and FinTech companies. As many financial products and services are delivered digitally, having a strong online presence enables customers to interact with these companies in their preferred environment.

Key aspects to consider include:

  1. Website and landing page design: The digital storefronts for finance and FinTech companies need to be not only aesthetically pleasing but also user-friendly, clear, and capable of instilling trust. An effective design makes it simple for potential customers to find and comprehend the information they need.
  2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): A sound SEO strategy increases a brand’s visibility in search engine results, thereby attracting high-intent organic traffic and building trust in the brand. Given that most consumers use search engines to research financial products and services, effective SEO is of paramount importance in these sectors.

Content marketing for finance and FinTech companies

Content marketing is a powerful tool when it comes to finance and FinTech marketing efforts. It’s a means to simplify complex concepts and deliver value to consumers through education. By creating compelling and informative content, these companies can help customers understand their offerings better, instilling confidence in their decisions. High-quality content also positions a finance or FinTech company as a reliable source of information, which can build trust and brand loyalty over time.

Furthermore, developing thought leadership through blogs, articles, and whitepapers can help demonstrate a company’s expertise and insight. This can enhance their reputation and influence in the industry. Social media platforms, with their vast user base and engagement tools, provide an effective channel for distributing this content. A well-crafted social media strategy can extend a finance or FinTech company’s reach, foster engagement, and ultimately drive more traffic and leads to their website.

Building trust and credibility

In the high-stakes world of finance and FinTech, trust and credibility are at the core of any successful business relationship. Companies operating within these sectors aren’t only tasked with managing complex financial services and products, but are also entrusted with sensitive personal and financial data. Because of this, cultivating trust and demonstrating credibility is paramount. 

Below, you can explore three ways to help a finance or FinTech company build trust and credibility through their marketing initiatives:

  • Use clear communication: To earn customer trust, companies should employ clear and transparent communication. This involves explaining financial products, services, and pricing in an easy-to-understand manner and avoiding jargon and ambiguity that could lead to confusion or mistrust.

  • Leveraging customer testimonials and case studies: Positive testimonials can serve as powerful endorsements, showcasing satisfied customers and successful service implementation. Case studies offer more in-depth examples of how a company’s services have helped solve real-world problems, reinforcing its credibility and expertise.

  • Nurturing strong relationships with clients through personalized marketing approaches: Personalized marketing shows customers that a company recognizes and values their unique needs. Regular outreach, proactive assistance, and custom-tailored services help foster deeper connections, reinforcing trust and encouraging customer loyalty.

Maximizing lead generation and conversion

For a finance or FinTech company looking to grow its customer base, a marketing strategy with a large focus on effective lead generation is essential. Implementing sound lead-generation strategies can involve a mix of inbound and outbound marketing tactics, for example, content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, and email marketing. These strategies must be tailored to the specific interests and needs of the target audience to attract high-quality leads that are most likely to convert into customers.

Using marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these lead-generation efforts. These tools can automate repetitive tasks, streamline marketing workflows, and provide valuable data for targeting and segmentation. They can also optimize conversion funnels by identifying areas of friction in the customer journey and providing insights to improve the user experience.

Compliance and ethical considerations

In Canada, companies in the finance or FinTech industry are required to navigate a complex regulatory landscape governed by bodies such as the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI). Compliance with these regulations is critical in all business operations, including marketing.

Transparency in marketing communications is critical, with companies expected to disclose all fees, terms, and conditions clearly. Compliance with industry standards, like those proposed by the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), enhances credibility. Additionally, the emphasis on ethical marketing practices, involving honesty, privacy respect, and avoidance of misleading tactics, can promote a finance or FinTech company’s reputation and foster customer trust.

Tracking and measuring success

Measuring the effectiveness of marketing strategies is fundamental to the continuous improvement and success of finance and FinTech companies. It allows you to assess what’s working, what isn’t, and what can be improved. It involves setting measurable goals, using analytics and tracking tools, and continuously analysing and optimizing campaigns, as discussed below:

  • Setting measurable goals and key performance indicators (KPIs): Start by defining what success looks like for your finance or FinTech marketing campaigns. Set measurable goals related to their customer acquisition, brand awareness, or customer engagement, for example. Then, establish KPIs that align with these goals, such as website traffic, click-through rates, or conversion rates.

  • Implementing analytics and tracking tools: Use tools like Google Analytics or CRM analytics to track the performance of your marketing efforts. These tools can provide valuable insights into customer behaviour, campaign performance, and more, allowing you to make data-driven decisions.
  • Analysing and optimizing marketing campaigns based on data-driven insights: Regularly review the data collected from your analytics tools. Look for trends, identify what’s driving success, and what areas need improvement. Then, use these insights to optimize your campaigns, making adjustments to improve performance and maximize your clients’ ROI.

Conclusion

The strategies outlined in this article serve as a comprehensive guide for finance and FinTech marketers looking to maximize their reach and impact within the space. From market segmentation to building trust and credibility, leveraging digital channels and optimizing conversion funnels, each strategy represents a vital piece of the broader picture.

The finance and FinTech industries are fast-paced, continuously evolving, and teeming with opportunities. If you can strategically navigate and leverage these dynamics, you’re in a prime position to make a significant impact.

WhiteOwl is equipped with the expertise and experience to guide you in this endeavour. If you’re ready to take your finance or FinTech clients’ digital marketing to the next level, don’t hesitate to contact us. Together, we can seize the opportunities presented by this dynamic industry and achieve extraordinary results.

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Mastering Online Sales: Top eCommerce Marketing Hacks Revealed

Navigating the online market and driving eCommerce growth can be a daunting challenge. The landscape is competitive and fast-paced, requiring out-of-the-box strategies to stand out and capture customer attention.

WhiteOwl, one of Canada’s leading digital marketing powerhouses, is here to help you unlock your eCommerce potential. In this article, we delve into some lesser-known, yet incredibly potent eCommerce marketing hacks that can help you enhance eCommerce store visibility, boost conversion rates, and ultimately drive unprecedented online business growth.

11 eCommerce marketing hacks

If you seek smarter, more efficient, and effective ways to achieve your eCommerce business goals and ensure sustainable growth in the digital marketplace, these hacks are for you:

1. Leverage the Power of FOMO

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a compelling psychological trigger that drives customer behaviour and decision-making processes. By infusing this sense of urgency in your marketing messages, you can encourage customers to secure offerings instantaneously. You can consider creating exclusive, time-sensitive offers, flash sales, or displaying diminishing stock levels to provoke quicker purchase decisions.

Remember, the objective is for customers to feel like they might miss out on an excellent opportunity. This strategy not only drives immediate sales but also promotes impulsive buying behaviour, leading to increased order values.

2. Experiment with gamified shopping experiences

In the era of digital consumerism and an abundance of online stores, providing a plain shopping experience is no longer enough. Gamification injects elements of entertainment and engagement into the shopping process. For example, concepts like quizzes or reward systems incentivize customer interaction with a brand, fostering longer-lasting relationships.

When customers earn points or rewards for specific actions like making a purchase, writing a review, or referring a friend, they feel valued, enhancing brand loyalty and repeat purchases.

3. Harness micro-influencers

When it comes to influencer marketing, bigger isn’t always better. Mega-influencers can command a vast audience, but their services often come with a high price tag and may lack authenticity. Micro-influencers, on the other hand, typically have smaller, yet highly engaged audiences that truly value their opinions. These influencers are often seen as trusted experts in their niche, offering a genuine connection with their followers.

Collaborating with micro-influencers can boost a brand’s credibility, enhance visibility, and reach potential customers who are likely to be genuinely interested in the products.

4. Create packages, bundles or kits

Product bundling is an effective eCommerce marketing hack that can increase an online store’s average order value and help clear out inventory. To do this, you can group complementary products together and offer them as a package deal at a slightly lower price than if purchased individually. Not only does this provide customers with a perceived higher-value deal, but it also simplifies decision-making and encourages customers to spend more.

This strategy can also be used to promote new or less-popular products by bundling them with best-sellers.

5. Use AI chatbots

In a time when customers seek (and semi-expect) immediate responses, AI chatbots can revolutionize customer service. Chatbots can provide round-the-clock general assistance, instantly addressing customer queries, assisting with product selection, and even upselling or cross-selling relevant products. By providing immediate, personalized responses, chatbots enhance the customer experience as well as free up the customer service team’s time for more complex tasks.

In addition to this, the data gathered by chatbots can offer valuable insights into customer behaviour and preferences, helping you tailor the brand’s marketing strategy.

6. Augmented reality (AR) experiences

AR has been increasingly embraced in eCommerce as it mitigates one of the main drawbacks of online shopping, which is the inability to try before you buy. AR allows customers to visualize products in their environment, whether it’s trying on a pair of sunglasses, applying makeup, or seeing how a new couch would look in their living room.

This interactive experience reduces purchase hesitations, increases customer confidence, and ultimately, decreases return rates.

7. Use social proof to build trust

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions reflect correct behaviour. In eCommerce, this can you can leverage this by displaying customer reviews, testimonials, and recent sales notifications on the eCommerce site. These elements enhance credibility and reassure visitors about the quality of the products, boosting their confidence to make a purchase.

The more trust customers have, the more likely they are to buy.

8. Try exit-intent offers

Exit-intent technology offers a powerful tool for combating cart abandonment, a common challenge in eCommerce. This technology detects when a visitor is about to leave an online store without completing a purchase and triggers a pop-up, usually displaying an enticing offer. This offer could be, for example, a discount, free shipping, or a bonus item – something that captures their interest and persuades them to reconsider leaving.

By capturing prospective customers’ attention at the crucial moment, you can convert potential exits into successful sales. Remember, a well-crafted exit-intent offer not only reduces the cart abandonment rate but also improves overall customer retention.

9. Optimize for mobile commerce

With billions of smartphone users worldwide, optimizing an eCommerce business platform for mobile is essential. By doing this, you can ensure the website is responsive and provides an excellent user experience on smaller screens. Mobile shoppers want a seamless, easy-to-navigate shopping experience with fast-loading pages and easy checkouts. Consider incorporating mobile payment solutions for swift transactions and ensure the eCommerce site design is visually appealing and easy to navigate on mobile devices.

By optimizing for mobile commerce, you can reach a broader customer base and increase sales, as more and more consumers are turning to their phones for online shopping.

10. Employ content marketing

Content marketing is a powerful tool in an eCommerce business strategy. By creating valuable, relevant content that resonates with the audience, you can attract, engage, and retain customers. This can be through blog posts, videos, infographics, tutorials, or buyer guides related to the products. Well-crafted content can educate customers about products, provide solutions to their problems, and establish a brand as an authority in its niche.

Additionally, consistently publishing SEO-optimized content can also improve a website’s search engine rankings, driving organic traffic to the site. With content marketing, you’re not just selling products; you’re building relationships and cultivating customer loyalty.

11. Implement a referral program

Referral programs, one of the most time-honoured eCommerce growth hacks, empower satisfied customers to become brand advocates. They leverage trust and personal relationships, turning word-of-mouth recommendations into a powerful growth tool for an eCommerce site. By offering an incentive to both the referrer and the referee, such as a discount, freebie, or reward points, you can effectively stimulate participation in the program. It’s important to ensure customers can easily share their referral links via email, social media, or personal referral codes.

A referral program that’s well-executed not only enhances customer acquisition and retention but also helps boost sales and overall customer lifetime value.

Achieve eCommerce excellence with WhiteOwl

In the ever-evolving world of eCommerce and a sea of eCommerce brands, keeping a pulse on emerging trends and employing creative marketing hacks can help you stay ahead of the curve. The innovative strategies we discussed in this article can enhance the user experience, boost customer engagement, and drive sales, ultimately contributing to eCommerce success.

At WhiteOwl, we’re committed to providing agencies with personalized, forward-thinking marketing solutions. Get in touch with us today so we can help you implement these creative hacks and propel your clients’ eCommerce ventures to unprecedented heights.

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Digital Marketing For Mining: How to Attract Investors Online

Digitisation is changing the face of mining companies and influencing their interactions with potential investors throughout the investor journey. An increasing number of mining companies are adopting innovative marketing technologies to enhance their reach and drive future growth.

So, it’s no longer enough to rely purely on word-of-mouth to spread your company’s news, advancements, and achievements through the mining investor grapevine.

There’s an all-encompassing solution – it’s called digital marketing.

At WhiteOwl, we pride ourselves on being the one-stop shop you need to take your company’s online presence to the next level. This article discusses digital marketing for the mining industry, specifically, how to attract investors online.

Why digital marketing?

Digital marketing not only helps you reach potential investors but enables you to gain a deeper understanding of them through detailed analytics. Equipped with this insight, you’re in an optimal position to identify your investor personas, refine your approach, develop the right marketing messages, and deliver them consistently. 

Below are some of the key benefits of using digital marketing to attract investors online:

  • enables you to target specific groups through your marketing efforts

  • provides insight that helps you understand your investors’ journey and how to approach them

  • more economical and resource-effective than outbound marketing initiatives

  • levels the playing field, allowing you to get noticed amongst bigger/more mature mining companies

  • performance is measurable to a significant extent

  • offers flexibility and a high level of adaptability

  • facilitates engagement with investors at every stage of the investor journey

Digital marketing for mining companies

Below, you can explore several methods of digital marketing mining companies can deploy to attract, nurture and win mining investors online:

Search engine optimization (SEO)

It’s no secret that most modern-day mining investors will conduct research online before committing to an investment. What many mining companies may not realize is that if they’re struggling to find investors online, investors are likely struggling to find them too. That’s where search engine optimization comes in! 

SEO involves optimizing your website to ensure it’s easily discoverable by potential investors using search engines. An excellent SEO strategy can increase the amount of organic investor traffic your website receives.

SEO comprises three core areas, which require equal focus for success. These core areas are on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO. Collectively, these involve factors like your website’s use of keywords, backlinks and coding. In short, search engines favour certain types of websites. Pro tip: it’s not those that lack relevancy, authority or speed.

Content marketing

Does your mining company’s online presence reinforce its credibility in the mining industry? Does the information your mining company shares online provide enough value for a potential investor to make a confident investment decision? If not, your content marketing may require a shake-up. Content marketing refers to creating and promoting assets as digital content. These assets can increase investor awareness surrounding your mining company, grow organic investor website traffic, and ultimately, increase your shareholder base.

Common investor roadblocks in the mining industry derive from not knowing what a company stands for, what kind of reputation it has and what its track record looks like. They also stem from not being able to gauge the company’s experience, expertise, credibility or credentials.

Content marketing offers the perfect opportunity to fill these critical information gaps and empower investors to make confident investment decisions. Blog posts, white papers, eBooks, infographics, and video and audio resources are all examples of content marketing.

Social media marketing (SMM)

Investors’ expectations have evolved. Gone are the days when they wanted to be pitched to by mining companies. Today’s digital age sees investors expecting a high level of engagement, and essentially, relationship building. Social media is the ultimate tool for connecting mining companies with retail and institutional investors in a space that facilitates interaction, sharing of opinions and two-way conversations. 

There are various social media channels you can use, for example, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

There are no firm rules for SMM success. However, delivering a consistent brand message across your social media channels, populating your feeds with relevant, value-adding information and proactively monitoring interactions can be a beneficial starting place. As social media marketing continues to dominate traditional marketing methods, it makes sense that mining companies want in.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Pay-per-click is a form of paid digital advertising that offers a quick and effective way of growing a mining company’s online presence and establishing it as an authoritative voice in the industry.

The beauty of (well-managed and optimized) PPC campaigns is that you’re paying for focused website or landing page traffic and the publisher only charges you each time a potential investor clicks on one of your ads.

PPC advertising is available across multiple platforms, for example, Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Effective PPC campaigns often have a specific audience, a well-defined goal and a clear call to action. Your PPC campaign goals may be to improve website traffic, grow the company’s social media following, encourage prospect engagement or generate resource or application downloads.

Email marketing

Email marketing involves sending emails to parts, or all of, the mining company’s mailing list. This form of digital marketing deserves a spot on every mining company’s marketing plan because of its effectiveness in warming up potential investors and nurturing existing ones.

It’s important to note that a mailing list often provides an audience that’s most likely to engage, given the genuine interest they demonstrate when they voluntarily opt-in to receiving communications from the company. Conveniently, you can use every digital marketing tool discussed in this article to help grow a quality mailing list.

Email marketing is an excellent tool for delivering personalized messages to the right people at the right time. Emails may be newsletters featuring current projects, advancements and predictions to keep potential investors up to date, or they may contain general investment tips and advice to provide value to potential investors.

Top tips for attracting investors online

Here are a few top tips from our team of online marketing experts for attracting mining investors online:

  • Be present. To be trusted in the digital space, you need to show up consistently. Before you get started with a digital marketing strategy to engage investors, it’s a great idea to be realistic about how often you can deliver valuable content, and then plan to post, advertise and/or email accordingly.

  • Add value. In the online space, the content you create essentially forms the basis of the public’s perception of the company. Ensuring your digital marketing strategy has a large focus on delivering consistent value, such as expert advice, can encourage investors to perceive the company as experienced, reliable, approachable and worthy of their investment.

  • Monitor performance. Tracking your digital marketing performance helps you determine the success of your efforts, use your marketing budget in the best way, learn about your audience, and improve your ROI. Thankfully, the abundance of comprehensive data that’s at your fingertips when conducting digital marketing campaigns makes it easy.

Wrapping up

Effectively promoting your mining company online, establishing an authoritative voice in the industry and standing out amongst the competition is a great recipe for attracting new investors. With a highly strategic, perfectly executed digital marketing strategy, it’s also very achievable.

Contact our expert digital marketing team to see how we can help. 

 
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The Top 5 Digital Marketing Metrics You Should Be Tracking

Tracking the performance of your digital marketing efforts is key to ensuring they’re serving their purpose. There’s an enormous amount of data made available to eCommerce marketers. So much, in fact, that it can make the effective tracking of your marketing metrics seem like a daunting feat. Knowing which marketing metrics to focus on is a significant starting point for easing the load. And our digital marketing experts at WhiteOwl are here to help by sharing five of the top advertising metrics.

5 top marketing metrics

While the exact metrics you focus on can depend on your marketing strategy and your overall objectives, here are five worth monitoring:

1. Reach

This marketing metric, as the name suggests, indicates how many individual people see your marketing content. For example, if 1000 people see a Facebook ad, the ad’s reach is 1000. This can be a key metric to track when brand or product awareness is a priority. Calculating the reach of every bit of digital advertising you do, both as a projection before starting and to identify performance during and after execution, can help you assess the impact of your campaigns and readjust them or reallocate resources as required.

2. Click-through-rate (CTR)

In a nutshell, a click-through rate is a percentage that represents the number of ad impressions that resulted in a click. For instance, if your ad was displayed 2000 times and clicked on 20 times, the calculation is 20/2000 which equals a CTR of 1%. CTR can be an essential metric to track, as not only does it indicate the relevancy of your content to your target audience, but it also affects where Google places your ads in terms of hierarchy and how much you pay per click.

3. Conversion rate

A conversion rate is a percentage that shows how many visitors to your eCommerce store complete a transaction. So, the higher the better! For example, if you have 500 people visit your online store and 30 of them make a purchase, the calculation is 30/500 x 100, which equals a conversion rate of 6%. This metric is a key insight for reducing acquisition costs and increasing sales revenue.

4. Cost per acquisition (CPA)

The cost per acquisition, also known as cost per lead, is an essential metric to monitor to determine your paid marketing’s return on investment (ROI). Your CPA essentially informs you of the cost associated with obtaining a customer, so you generally want to keep this number low. For example, if you spend $700 on an ad campaign and gain 15 new customers from it, the calculation is 700/15, which equals a CPA of $46.66. A consistently high CPA can suggest the need for rethinking your campaign structure.

5. Return on advertising spend (ROAS)

In simple terms, the return on advertising spend is how much profit your marketing initiatives generate. For example, if you spend $1000 on an advertising campaign and generate $2000 revenue from it, the calculation is 2000/1000, which equals a ratio of 2:1 or a ROAS of 200%. It’s the ultimate quantitative performance evaluation of your advertising campaigns and the impact they have on your bottom line. Fundamentally, ROAS can help you assess which of your advertising methods are most profitable and which require restructuring.

With over a decade of experience providing SEO and digital marketing solutions to clients around the world and from every niche, WhiteOwl provides real results for organizations of all sizes. So, you can also leave the fussing over the metrics to us! Contact us today to find out how.

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A Comprehensive Guide to Facebook Ads (Types and Setup)

Despite several new kids on the social media block, Facebook continues to gain users and provides a popular method of online advertising for businesses around the world to market their products and services. As such, Facebook advertising remains a key skill for marketers looking to cater to their clients’ digital marketing needs. Understanding the various elements of Facebook advertising can help you create ad campaigns for your clients that deliver the results that matter most to them.

In this article, we define Facebook ads, discuss the difference between Facebook ads manager and business manager, introduce the types of ads and provide detailed instructions on how to create a Facebook ad campaign from scratch.

An introduction to Facebook ads

Facebook ads are promotional posts, essentially paid adverts, that businesses can use to showcase their products or services. They typically have more elements than a standard FB post and include a call to action specific to the campaign objective. You can choose to have your clients’ Facebook ad campaigns shown in a variety of places, for example, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and in a range of formats, for example, image, video or slideshow.

A key feature of Facebook advertising is the ability to target users based on specifics, such as demographics, location and interests. It also provides the opportunity to re-target users, for example, people who’ve previously visited your customers’ websites or clicked on one of their ads.

Facebook Ads Manager vs. Facebook Business Manager

Understanding the difference between Ads Manager and Business manager can help you know which to deploy and when. Below, you can explore the definition of each:

Ads Manager

Facebook’s Ads Manager is essentially the starting point for the creation of FB ads. It’s the tool that allows you to design and edit sponsored campaigns for a Facebook account. Its key features also allow you to select devices and positioning for ads, store lists of contacts for targeting custom audiences, discover relative target audiences and deploy A/B testing for maximized ad efficiency

It can help you monitor campaign performance based on various metrics, for example, reach, click-through rates and impressions. Note, while Ads manager provides great insights within Facebook-owned apps, it cannot track users outside of these. Google Analytics is a great option for tracking the performance of your campaigns with holistic accuracy.

Business Manager

You can consider Facebook Business Manager a centralized hub for overseeing all of your Facebook advertising efforts. For digital marketers who manage several clients’ Facebook advertising, using this tool can be an excellent idea. It allows you to connect numerous client Facebook pages and ad accounts to your Business Manager account without the requirement to request administrator access from your personal FB account. You can access Ads Manager directly from your Business Manager account, too.

Business Manager not only gives you the ability to keep your business and personal FB endeavors separate and manage multiple Facebook pages and their advertising campaigns in one place. It typically also comes with greater support from Facebook should you encounter a technical issue.

Facebook ad formats

There is a range of FB ad options and formats for you to choose from to suit a variety of campaign objectives. You can explore some of them below:

  • Image ads: These are the simplest of the ad formats FB has on offer, allowing you to promote a product or service through a single image, for example, an illustration, design or photograph. While the simplicity of this ad type can pose limitations, image ads can be well-suited to campaigns that can communicate their message through powerful visuals.

  • Video ads: These ads allow you to promote a business through a single video of varying lengths, though shorter videos seem to be the most engaging. While the creation of video ads might be less time and cost-effective than other types, they can be a powerful choice for demonstrating products and highlighting moving components.

  • Slideshow ads: This ad format provides the perfect opportunity to grab users’ attention through movement and sound but without the amount of effort and data a video ad requires. Slideshow ads can string together up to 10 individual photos or videos and can be a choice for great for highlighting processes or similar products.

  • Carousel ads: These ads allow users to swipe through a range of content, each of which has its own caption and link to a unique landing page. Carousel ads can be a great option for campaigns that require storytelling or for products or processes that can benefit from being grouped into sections.

  • Collection ads: Similar to carousel ads, these ads can be great for larger companies to showcase multiple products and provide users with a window-shopping-like experience. They’re customizable, full-screen and allow users to make a purchase directly from the ad.

  • Story ads: This ad type offers an immersive user experience through full-screen displays that appear in between the stories users view on various platforms. While these types of ads usually require specially formatted content, they can be great for building brand awareness, as they allow for a lot of freedom of expression and the use of engaging effects.

  • Instant experience ads: These ads provide users with the opportunity to interact with your content by swiping through images, tilting their screens for different angles, and zooming in and out. Instant experience ads are available on mobile only and can be complex to set up, but they’re quick to load and highly engaging.

FB advertising costs

The costs for placing FB ads can range significantly depending on multiple factors. Below, you can find a few points surrounding how Facebook advertising costs work so you can help your clients set an ad budget:

  • It can be more expensive to advertise to narrow audiences than to broad ones.

  • Costs for ads can change depending on where they’re shown, for example, on Facebook or Instagram.

  • How long a Facebook ad runs can affect the final cost.

  • Ads for highly competitive industries, expensive products, and valuable leads can cost more than others.

  • It can be more expensive to run Facebook ads during specific times of day, seasons and holiday periods.

  • Ad costs typically range considerably between different geographical locations.

How to create a Facebook ad campaign

Before creating a Facebook ad campaign, you need to set up an ad account for the specific Facebook page. Once this is done, you can start working on a Facebook ad, which you can find step-by-step instructions for below:

1. Define the objective

When creating ads, Facebook provides a selection of advertising objectives to choose from. It’s important you specify an objective that aligns with the business’s Facebook advertising strategy and overall goals. It’s important to note that sales-orientated objectives attract a pay-per-action cost, whereas exposure-orientated objectives attract a pay-per-impression cost. Below you can find the various objectives, which essentially drive the action you aim for users to take:

  • Reach

  • Brand awareness

  • Traffic

  • Engagement

  • Video views

  • App installs

  • Messages

  • Lead generation

  • Conversions

  • Store traffic

  • Catalog sales

2. Specify the target audience

The exact audience you specify for your Facebook ads campaign and whether you take a narrow or broad approach to reach can depend on the business’s target market and ad objectives. There are several ways you can specify the target audience for Facebook campaigns.

You can set parameters using Facebook’s in-built targeting, which includes a broad range of options, from age to gender, education, interests and life events to behaviors, financials and more. You can also choose to target a custom audience from a contact list you upload, which might comprise contacts from the business’s CRM, previous visitors to their website, or people who have downloaded their app.

3. Set the budget and schedule

There are several important things to consider at this stage to control your ad spend. Firstly, you need to choose a daily or lifetime budget. A daily budget specifies how much your client is willing to spend each day, whereas a lifetime budget specifies how much they’re happy to spend over the entire period the ad is live. Next, you can choose your ad schedule, for instance, whether you want to run the ad straight away and on an ongoing basis or want it to start and end on particular days.

Advanced budgeting options allow you to opt to bid manually for actions, such as clicks or impressions, should you not wish to use Facebook’s recommended bids which are based on the behavior of other Facebook advertisers. Doing this can give you ultimate control over how much your clients pay for user actions generated by their campaigns. You can also choose to have the ad shown at a standard or accelerated rate, though to select a sped-up delivery you’ll need to adopt manual bidding.

4. Select the placements

Next, you can choose where you want the ad to be shown. The simple method for doing this is to select Advantage+ placements which automatically places the ad based on where it’s expected to generate the best results. Choosing Manual placements can give you more control over where people see the ad, allowing you to choose from options, such as:

  • Platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network

  • Placements: Newsfeeds, messages, stories, reels, apps, websites, search, etc

  • Devices: mobile and/or desktop

  • Operating systems: iOS, Android, feature phones, or all devices.

It’s important to note that the options you see displayed here may depend on the campaign objective you chose initially.

5. Create and publish the ad

Finally, it’s time for the ad creative. This step involves choosing the format and adding the copy and media elements. It’s important to note that the formats Facebook makes available for you to select at this stage can also depend on the ad objective you previously chose.

The recommended guidelines for various Facebook ads, in terms of text allowances and dimensions for photos and videos, can frequently change. So, it’s important to check the latest specs to create ads that adhere to Facebook’s specific design criteria. Once you’ve added all the details for your ad, you can use the preview tool to ensure it looks as you intended. If so, the next step is to publish it! 

6. Track the ad’s performance

Once you’ve published your client’s ad and it’s officially up and running, it’s important to monitor it to ensure it’s getting the intended results. Don’t worry if it’s not – that just gives you the perfect opportunity to optimize. You can find performance insights on the dashboard within the account’s Ad Manager. The default settings should be enough to give you great oversight of the ad’s performance, but you can also get really specific with the insights you want to see by applying a few filter options. 

While the ad’s KPIs will depend on its overall objective, some good metrics to monitor when tracking the performance of your clients’ ads are: 

    • Results: a value representing the number of times the ad has achieved its goal, for example, getting someone to like the post or click on a link 

    • Cost per result: how much it cost to generate each result

    • Reach: how many users see the ad

    • Impressions: how many times the ad is seen (including by the same person)

    • Amount spent: this refers to how much has been spent on the ad in total so far

Your technical SEM partner

Do you want to leverage your clients’ ads for increased traffic, higher ROI, better quality leads, maximized revenue, or enhanced conversion rates? Consider WhiteOwl the tactical, technical and analytical partner that can help elevate your Facebook ads services. Contact us to see how we can assist you. 

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A Guide on How to Outline a Google Ads Audit Report for Clients

Search engine marketing (SEM) can provide ample value for your clients, but only if you’re running campaigns worth writing home about and presenting audit reports that communicate meaningful insights. Whether you’re presenting an audit report to a potential client to summarize their account status or providing one to an existing client to showcase your work and demonstrate return on investment (ROI), it’s important that it’s well-structured. A well-structured audit report is generally one that’s goal orientated, comprises the key elements and makes use of a logical outline.

In this article, we discuss how to establish clearly defined reporting goals, detail how to outline your Google Ads audit report, offer tips for creating an effective report and share the benefits of getting your client reporting right.

Establishing your reporting goals

Google Ads audit reporting is not something you can conduct effectively with a ‘one size fits all’ approach. So, before you get into the nitty-gritty of developing your report outline, it’s important to first clearly define your reporting goals. An important thing to consider when undertaking this process is what success actually looks like for the account at hand. When you know what you want to achieve, you can create a reporting outline that perfectly aligns.

Some examples of Google Ads audit reporting goals might be:

  • Providing a general overview of an account

  • Demonstrating ROI

  • Exhibiting your work

  • Tracking account progress

  • Highlighting performance trends

How to outline a Google Ads audit report for clients

There can be several effective ways to outline a Google Ads audit report for your clients, depending on your reporting goals and their account objectives. Below, you can find an example of one way to outline your document, including a breakdown of the various sections and the information you might cover in each:

Section 1: Overview

It’s a good idea that the first section in your Google Ads audit report summarizes the client’s primary Google Ads key performance indicators (KPIs) and the overall assessment of their account. This can make it easy for them to comprehend their account’s performance at a glance. 

In this section you can include, for example, their target cost per in-app action (CPA) and return on ad spend (ROAS) and whether they’re achieving this target. The overview section of your audit report can also be a good place to include their quality score, spend allocations across their various campaign types and conversion rate.

Section 2: Tracking

The next section can cover how the client is currently tracking their performance and if it’s effective, or, if not, what’s required to make it effective. In this part of your audit report, you can outline the status of their conversion tracking, specifically, if it’s set up correctly and tracking the key objectives. 

Depending on the client’s business and requirements, you might also use this section to refer to the status of their auto-tagging if they’re using Google Analytics tracking.

Section 3: Bid and budget management

Next, you can discuss bid management and budget management matters. For bid management, this might include outlining the current bidding strategies. For example, whether manual CPC bidding or smart bidding is in use and how it aligns with the client’s business goals. 

When discussing the budget, it can be important to address whether it’s sufficient as well as how it’s allocated over the client’s campaigns and whether there’s a requirement for adjustments.

Section 4: Search

This section can be a good place to discuss everything search-related, for example, when their ads are seen, where their ads are seen and who their ads are seen by. After taking an in-depth look at the client’s campaign structures, you may report on, for example, the targeting of distinct user personas or the advertising of specific products or services. 

It can be a good idea to discuss the effectiveness of the client’s ad copy and landing pages in this section, as well as delve into keyword selections, conversions and match types. You can include your recommendations for search optimization in this part of your audit report, too.

Section 5: Shopping Ads and feed

After analyzing the performance of your client’s Google Shopping campaigns, you can include your findings in this section, along with a summary of how their inventory types, descriptions and categories align with current Google policies. This section can include the structure and priority of their shopping campaigns, as well as the traffic and revenue the individual campaigns generate. 

Depending on the nature of your audit, you may choose to also include the findings of your analysis of their product grouping and segmentation strategy.

Tips for creating a great report

Below, you can find a few tips to consider when creating a Google Ads audit report that highlights your expertise to your clients:

1. Focus on metrics that matter

Your initial thought might be to provide an audit report that’s bursting at the seams with insights. However, it’s important to realise which are actually of importance to the client’s overall goals and focus your report on those. A good approach to this can be to identify five or six primary metrics in relation to your client’s overall Google Ads account performance.

2. Transform data into information

Data can be of little relevance to your clients without context. It can also be easy for your North Star to get a little lost in your audit report amongst the number crunching. Your clients are likely less interested in the numbers themselves than what they mean, how they relate to their business growth and whether they align with their overall marketing strategies. 

To create a highly effective Google Ads audit report, it’s essential that you transform data into comprehensive information. You can do this by providing visualisations and adding notes to various sections that provide reasoning for variances in metrics, for example.

3. Comparisons are key

Providing comparisons in your audit reports can be an effective way of illustrating Google Ads performance to your clients. Two beneficial comparisons worth including in your report are historical data and industry benchmarks. 

For historical data, you can compare client account performance over time, for example, over weeks, months, quarters or years to indicate progress. For industry benchmarks, you might include insights that highlight how your client’s account metrics compare to those of other businesses in the industry.

4. Provide clear action items

Ultimately, conducting a Google Ads audit gives you an opportunity to identify areas of your client’s Google Ads account that require improvement. It’s essential that you relay this information back to the account holders through your audit report rather than providing them with a report that leaves them saying, “Ok, and?”. 

Aim to create an action-orientated audit report that not only highlights areas that require enhancing but also provides a list of actions required to do so. You might include flash notes for recommendations for each section, or you may choose to include a specific recommendations section in your audit report outline.

5. Time it right

Like with most things, consistency is key to Google Ads audit reporting. A major factor behind the effectiveness of your reporting is your reporting schedule. It’s a good idea to pick a schedule, whether it be weekly, monthly or quarterly, and then maintain it. 

The ideal timing for your audit reports can vary depending on many elements, each of which has its own unique benefits. For example, submitting monthly reports can help you communicate account goal progression to your clients, whereas submitting an audit report quarterly may be more beneficial for communicating your efforts surrounding a high-level strategy.

Benefits of an effective client audit report

While perfecting your Google Ads audit reports for your clients can take time, it can produce many benefits, including:

  • Facilitating efficient decision-making: An effective audit report provides a client with the important information they require about their Google Ads account. Equipping your clients with this comprehensive information can foster collaboration and practical decision-making.

  • Highlighting key points: A well-structured audit report typically summarizes the key metrics and account activity in an overview section and then elaborates on them throughout the rest of the report. This can assist you with directing your client’s attention to the insights that matter most.

  • Showcasing your expertise: As your clients aren’t usually present while you conduct the day-to-day activities on their Google Ads account, they might not understand exactly what you do, when you do it or why you do it. Your audit report gives you a great opportunity to highlight your efforts, the results of the actions you’ve taken on their account and your proactive approach to ensuring continual progress towards their goals.

  • Promoting enhanced planning: Creating an effective audit report can be an intricate process. While undergoing this detailed process, you can equip yourself with a beneficial overview and in-depth understanding of your clients’ ads accounts, putting you in a strong position to conduct their future Google Ads account planning and budgeting

Your technical SEM partner 

Do you want to leverage your clients’ search ads for increased traffic, higher ROI, better quality leads, maximized revenue, or enhanced conversion rates? Consider WhiteOwl the tactical, technical and analytical partner that can help elevate your search engine marketing services. Contact us to see how we can assist you.