June, 2020 - Mason Interactive

And update from Brook, Mason Interactive Founder & CEO:

I wanted to take a few minutes to think through some trends that we’re seeing across our direct-to-consumer brands here at Mason Interactive.

If you have attended any of our webinars, you will know that we have seen the following trends:

Starting in Mid March, advertisers pulled out of the market, while at the same time, more people were online. Laws of supply and demand meant that online advertising got much cheaper, very quickly. Anyone who had the wherewithal to stay in-market essentially got ½ off their advertising spend.
At the same time, Conversion % – the rate at which a click to a website turned into a sale – stayed about flat, with the following caveats:
1. It’s a discount environment. Customers expect a sale.
2. Not everyone saw this. Some clients (skincare) did better while some (travel products) did worse.

These trends are a product of political unrest, and COVID-19, and the resultant combined effect on the economy.

What we have seen over the last few weeks is a steep and sudden reversal of these CPM’s. The cost of advertising online for our direct-to-consumer clients is now higher than it was in March, and is approaching Black Friday/Cyber Monday levels.

CPM vs Click-to-Conversion Rate, Mason Interactive D2C Clients March 1st – June 16th

I will say that this is not what we saw last year; this is not seasonal and this is definitely a new trend. What this means for our clients is that we have to be more strategic than ever to help them survive in this still converting-price-sensitive-environment.

Instagram has recently introduced a new shop feature, Shops on Instagram, in order to support businesses with their shift to e-commerce during the COVID-19 crisis. Shops on Instagram, currently in alpha stage, brings users an immersive experience and a full-screen storefront, that enables businesses to build their brand story and drive product discovery across the platform.

In this article, we explore what Shops on Instagram does, and what are the benefits for businesses, as well as for Instagram users.

What is Shops on Instagram?

With Shops on Instagram customers can visit a brand’s shop from the Instagram profile or through Feed and Stories. Once in a shop, customers can browse products, explore collections and even purchase products. All this happens seamlessly through Instagram’s in-app browser, or from a web browser where checkout on Instagram is enabled. Keep in mind that this is an upgrade to the current shop experience that exists on Instagram.

With shops, Instagram wants to give customers a place to experience the joy of shopping versus the chore of buying. Businesses can customize the shopping experience through collections, and curate products into themes that tell the brand story.

What are the benefits?

This native shopping experience provides users a personalized, streamlined experience with the ease of browsability, and safety to explore products without having to worry about security risks. For businesses, Shops on Instagram is an easy way to improve the digital storefront, and get their brand and products found by customers.

The real benefit will be long-term when customers can shop and checkout on the platform. Essentially, it will shorten the length of time from product introduction to sale and that way improve the buyer journey. By removing a click from a platform like Instagram or Facebook to your website, you will also remove possible issues with load time, site speed, website user experience (UX) hiccups, and bugs on the checkout – all of which can have a negative impact to the buyer journey. Especially small businesses that don’t have website development teams, often struggle with creating seamless UX experiences. For them in particular, an in-app shop feature will be a game changer.

What better way for a small business to migrate online and adopt a storefront on a platform like Instagram that already has millions of users engaging and consuming both content and brand experiences.

“What better way for a small business to migrate online and adopt a storefront on a platform like Instagram that already has millions of users engaging and consuming both content and brand experiences.”

At Mason Interactive, we are most excited about the potential to turn this into new ad units and objectives for optimization related to these new shop experiences. Once Shops on Instagram develops, we hope to use shops as a new objective to optimize and focus our investment towards those users that are more inclined to interact with and shop within these experiences.

Who is eligible?

Facebook has begun a phased roll out of shops to all businesses globally. For now, Shops on Instagram is available only for the brands that have been hand-selected by Facebook’s product team to participate in the alpha, but it is expected to be expanded to all businesses over the next few months.

At Mason Interactive, we are continuously monitoring the latest updates and performance of our clients who are already opted in to the alpha stage. Talk to our e-commerce experts today to learn more about Facebook and Instagram shop features and the best ways to drive online sales.

This month, we hosted a higher education webinar alongside Google to discuss the digital marketing trends and tactics we are seeing in the education sphere surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. If you missed the webinar, here are the highlights from Mason Interactive’s Brook Shepard and Google’s Stephanie Schmitt.

Lower Advertising Costs for Institutions

No matter your institution’s size and budget allocation for marketing efforts, you want to make sure that you are getting the most value for your advertising budget. In such uncertain times as the past few months, you may have re-evaluated your marketing efforts in order to cut costs.

Since March, many colleges and universities have dropped media spend, and some have gone completely dark. For those that kept media spend live, the Cost Per Impression (CPM) dropped more than 50% from March 1st to April 4th. This meant that media was cheaper if you stayed in the game.

“Today, you can convert students more profitably at a lower rate”

At Mason Interactive, we saw the conversion rates (CVR) holding fairly steady across our higher education clients. “When your CVR is holding steady and the media is cheaper, you will convert students more profitably at a lower rate”, says Brook.

Let’s Talk Attribution

Most of our higher education clients use either First Touch Attribution or Last Touch Attribution. First Touch Attribution is usually a display campaign where you are getting your institution in front of new eyes. Last Touch Attribution is normally a remarketing campaign where you constantly stay relevant to your prospective students. Choosing the correct attribution model for your institution is key to optimal enrollments. Not sure what is the right attribution model for you? Talk t o our experts today to find out.

Now, let’s see how attribution plays a role in attracting new students…

“Leaky Student Bucket”

What is a leaky bucket in digital marketing? Well, similar to a leaky bucket in real life, whatever is in the bucket will continue to diminish unless it is constantly replaced. For many different reasons, we always have leads that tend to fall off, or leak out of the bucket.

Have you had to cut media spend in the past few months to increase efficiency and only focus on one level of attribution? Let’s say you decide to only focus on remarketing. Now, you have a leaky bucket of students that you are remarketing to, but you are not refilling the bucket. Soon, your bucket will be empty and you will have no one to remarket to.

That is the problem with only focusing on one single level of attribution at once; it causes your bucket to leak and your leads to run dry.

How do you fix a leaky bucket? You have to understand that everything in your marketing strategy is connected. What you do in one part of your marketing funnel can affect other parts of the marketing funnel.

Marketing Trends During COVID-19

The trends that we have been seeing over the past few months with our education clients are actually quite contrary to some initial assumptions. The majority of students are still planning on going back to school for the fall semester. Using Google survey data from March 2020, a whopping 56% of students say that Coronavirus has NOT changed their plans to go back to school.

Now, this does not mean the entire student body will be flocking back to campus in August. In fact, students who say that an online offering is an important factor when looking at schools went from 35% to 47%. Students are still holding onto their intentions of enrolling but are looking for alternatives to the traditional college experience.

In addition to online offerings being a big ticket item, the demand for education and training has increased almost 10% YoY.

56% of students say that Coronavirus has NOT changed their plans to go back to school.

99% of students have no plans to delay their education even if there is no resolution to COVID-19 by Q3. Clearly, COVID-19 has had little to no impact on student’s upcoming education plans; even more of a reason to stay active in your media campaign.

Keep the Funnel Full

Keeping the marketing funnel full will require new ways of thinking now that people are living in a new normal. Focusing on specific aspects of your campaign will help to maximize your efficiency. Timing is very important because you want to know that your prospective students will see your ads when they are online. Since most people are working from home and online pretty much all the time, you want to make sure your ads do not just run the typical workday hours.

Introducing flexibility in programs if possible is also highly recommended. For those students that do not feel comfortable returning to campus, they want to have an online learning environment available.

Creative Changes

Gone are the days of showing ads with large groups of students enjoying their time together. We cannot show people what they can’t have. Revised creative copy can easily be overlooked, but it makes a huge impact on those that see your ads as ‘insensitive’.

Why Having an Agency Partner Makes a Difference

Mason Interactive is a Premier Google Partner, offering an exclusive partnership. Only the top 5% of agencies in the nation are given the coveted title and we are proud to work with the full team at Google. For our clients this means exclusive access to Google insights and latest tools months ahead of the public.

Schedule a free consultation with us today to discuss more about your institution’s digital strategy.

With over 800 million active users in 2020, TikTok has quickly become Gen Z’s most-popular social sharing platform. In 2018, TikTok surpassed Instagram and Snapchat as the #1 free app in the Apple Store. TikTok’s attraction is based on an endless stream of entertaining, short-form videos, containing stimulating effects and music, and often features lip syncing, dancing, or funny pets. As an advertising platform, it can be a goldmine for businesses.

Mason Interactive is privileged to be one of the few agencies with access to TikTok Ads beta release. This means our clients can immediately launch their campaigns on TikTok (otherwise the self-serve ad platform is available only by request), and have the support of a trusted partner on a platform that can otherwise be challenging to advertise on.

TikTok in a nutshell

TikTok is most popular amongst young adults and teens, thanks to its creative and fun approach to social sharing. 66% of TikTok users are under the age of 30, making it an ideal platform for any business marketing to a younger audience. Even if your product is for older audiences, it may be a good idea to monitor the demographics: because TikTok is still a fairly new app, the audience will evolve over time, just as Facebook and Instagram have evolved.

With only 2,000 individual advertisers, TikTok opens up an uncluttered audience for any size business. While big brands, including Netflix, Apple and Walgreens, have already discovered TikTok’s potential, there’s an equal opportunity for smaller brands to get noticed.

Advertising on TikTok

As an advertising platform TikTok is very similar to Facebook and Google, and the same rules apply. Who do you target? What do you want to achieve? How do you measure success? What is your budget? Once you have the answers, the next step is to choose the right advertisement format.

In-feed native video ads

Gain exposure with 15-second video ads that appear when scrolling through videos on the platform, much like in Instagram.

Brand takeover

Go big and maximize your reach with full-screen ads that are displayed when the user opens TikTok. These exclusive ads are limited to one advertiser per day on each category.

Hashtag challenge

Engage your audience with a sponsored hashtag challenge that appears as a branded banner on the discovery page and drives users to create their own content using your hashtag.

Custom Influencer Content

Partner with influencers to catch the attention of TikTok users in your market. As a TikTok agency partner, Mason Interactive has access to TikTok Creator Marketplace, currently on beta, in which advertisers can search through available influencers across a range of categories.

Depending on your chosen advertisement format, you don’t need to break the bank to start advertising. TikTok has a minimum of $500 advertising budget at the campaign level and a minimum of $50 at the ad group level.

How to create thumb-stopping content?

The success of your TikTok campaign comes down to your content.

Focus on authenticity

TikTok users don’t expect to see flash camerawork or polished productions. What truly catches their attention is authentic and original content with interesting visual effects and music.

Stay on top of the trends

Familiarize yourself with what is trending on TikTok, and what type of content users are currently creating. From most popular tracks to trending hashtags and challenges, make sure your content is aligned with the trends.

Create Tik-Tok only content

TikTok is a one-of-a-kind platform, and videos that work on other platforms may be too commercial for TikTok users. In other words, create fun, interactive videos purposefully for TikTok, that encourage engagement.

To recap, TikTok is an ideal advertising platform for any business that wants to reach Gen Z. However, this platform, yet fun and authentic, requires a full understanding of its users and best practices in order to drive successful campaigns.

Want to get started with TikTok Ads? Access to TikTok Ads platform is currently available by request only and the qualification process can take upto one month. Once you have submitted your information through TikTok’s website, a representative will contact you to let you know if your business qualifies.

If you want to get started sooner, contact us today. As a TikTok agency partner we have instant access to the advertising platform and insights on the best TikTok advertising tactics.

We are pleased to announce that a fashion retailer Kelley Cawley has selected Mason Interactive as their digital advertising partner.

Previously focused on brick and mortar, Kelley Cawley wanted to find an expert agency who could help the brand strengthen its digital presence and drive increased online sales. The new partnership with Mason Interactive aims to grow the e-commerce business by acquiring new customers through media channels such as Facebook and Instagram, and attracting high-quality traffic to its online store.

E-commerce is soaring worldwide, and Mason Interactive is proud to support businesses with their shift to digital, says Mason CEO Brook Llewellyn Shepard. “We are excited to begin the work with Kelley Cawley, and introduce the brand to new audiences by leveraging our team’s expertise and knowledge in the direct-to-consumer space.”

We are committed to provide excellent service, and support brands on their digital journeys. Sign up here to schedule a free consultation with our digital experts, and take the first step on your journey.