“Oh, did you tap by mistake? It happens.” the most creative mobile ads from the past few years

The companies who bother to optimise banner ads for mobile, usually do this by taking off some of the text and adapt the scale. But this is only technical responsivity and doesn’t maximize the full potential of mobile ads. I show you a few exciting examples where the features of a smartphone were creatively exploited.

While most of us find the banners covering our full screen on the mobile very disruptive, smart mobile ads help and entertain their audience, instead of being a pain. Brands can make use of the unique features of a smartphone, like touchscreen, GPS and in-built camera. And sometimes you don’t need anything complex, just some honest words.

Did you tap by mistake?

This campaign by IKEA didn’t even need a heavy budget. They simply honestly reacted to the fact that some of us (according to some surveys 60% of us) tap the banner by mistake as an attempt to close or remove it, which is really annoying. IKEA displayed this frustration on their upfront banners: “Oh, did you tap it by mistake? It happens.” Their click rate was three times as much as usual, altogether 400,000 people landed on their page. They had a message match there: “Where life happens.”

Closing the banner is dangerous

The tablet ad of Bradesco Seguros insurance company looks like a simple car ad until you swipe it to get rid of it. At this moment the car starts and crashes, and the message appears: “The worst things happen unexpectedly.” They used the power of surprise at a moment when people were about to leave their ad.

Virtual armchair in your flat – Augmented reality in mobile ad

The AR application of IKEA made it possible for users to see how the specific pieces of furniture would look like in their flat. Users could also get additional information on products in the legendary catalogue. The application was downloaded 6,2 million times which made it the most popular marketing application of all times.

What I really like about this campaign that it didn’t only focus on the new technology per se, but used it to create a really useful service for clients and prospects. Brands sometimes can be carried away by the abundance of solutions technology offers an tend to use these without a real purpose. In the IKEA campaign, however, the technology (AR) cleverly supports the urge from customers to see the products in their own home.

People do watch (long) video banners

The launch of Nissan Rouge was promoted by a video clip showing the car fighting with evil snowmen. The 1-minute video is an intriguing film in itself, but watchers could stop it at certain (pre-announced) hotspots to learn some interesting information (e.g. that the lowest temperature ever measured in Canada was -63 Celsius.) 73% of the people who started to watch the video finished it, and 93% of watchers gave some interaction! The golden oldie “Did you know it?” technique proved itself again.

Should Sara stay in or go out?

In the mobile video by Victoria Secret, users could choose if the model should stay in or go out. The idea is very simple and basically works with the choice between two videos on top of the first one. You can imagine how many people watched both versions, again and again 🙂

Copy by Timea Kadar, www.writefab.com Read my quotes about words here: www.instagram.com/writefabulously

 

 

 

How I got 1,000 free Twitter and Instagram followers respectively in 30 days (and why some expert tips suck)

#1 Disclosure: I am not at all an expert on Twitter and Instagram, in fact, I didn’t have too much to do with these channels, but for a new project it was impossible to ignore it (and it is generally impossible to ignore these). So I opened my accounts and searched for expert tips which I followed – as much as I could.

#2 Disclosure: I am still not selling anything so I can not show how these followers convert to sales, at the moment I am just building an audience.

Follow the followers

I found it much easier to connect and socialise on Twitter and Instagram than on Facebook. One common advice is to see who follows some of the biggest influencers in your industry and follow them as you share the same interest. This proved to be amazingly effective, many of them followed back and even new people followed. In my case the affinity is travel, so it attracts a quite wide range of people.

Platforms that could be useful

I also found twiends.com that shows you Twitter people in the location or affinity you want, but basically, Twitter does this by itself anyway. Twiends is free but if you pay a weekly $9,95 you are featured to more people and will have even more followers, but I am not sure how relevant they are.

For another $19,99 per month at commun.it you can save time and engage your followers by thanking top followers, sending an automated reply to fresh fans, in which you can welcome them and ask them to follow tour Instagram/blog/Facebook. The platform has many other similar features. I tried both for free, and at this initial stage I didn’t see a dramatic benefit, but at a later stage – or for an other industry – these might be useful.

To grow Instagram followers I tried a few platforms – among them Influxsocial, this again increases visibility and proved to be great, however, I am not sure how many followers came from here, or from my own activity (looking for the followers of influencers). There are a lot of providers selling tonnes of fake followers who look real, but obviously, this is not an option if you want to do it seriously.

Quality follower

A general advice reads that you should look at who to follow, how active they are, what they post and react to their posts, like, comment, share. Sounds great, but I was overwhelmed by the social vibe, everybody sending automated/real messages, it is impossible to spend minutes with each profile – apart from running our usual business.

But I agree, in some niche and specific areas or at a later stage it could be good. Instead, I concentrated on a few selected ones and kept engaging with them, liking, re-tweeting, and this created a mutual relationship.

Engaging content

This is the million dollar tip that you can read everywhere and is quite obvious, but the fact is that there are thousands and thousands of unbelievably engaging content out there – especially in travel. So what I did is posting the photos that had a positive feedback earlier in my other channels, and I posted a lot. I tried to figure out what people like but the volume of likes was not enough to judge it. I also studied what others did and just went on my own posting as much as I could, and on Twitter re-tweeting with some own comments.

Guest-posts

This is also a popular advice and makes all the sense. However just getting into it, messaging with people back and forth takes an enormous time, not to mention writing the piece itself, and eventually, it can easily get sunk in the threads. So what I did was asking for interviews, I just had to send a set of questions and I usually got back great content and pictures – and some good partnerships.

#Hashtags

I admit it was a pain at the beginning, and for someone who loves writing, it is a struggle to talk in hashtags. The expert tip is to choose the right hashtag as these are your “keywords.” Well, easier said than done. Again I experimented with these, there were some I always used, some I selected from the suggestions twitter offered, and I also looked out for what others did. By the end, it was quite fun.

Just enjoy

After all the best advice – that by the way, nobody gives – is that you should enjoy it and explore how the content, the people, the interactions from the thread.

Image and copy by Timea Kadar, www.writefab.com Read my quotes about words here (this is not the instagram profile I detail above, but  new one): www.instagram.com/writefabulously

 

 

What does it cost – how to communicate the price?

Price is always a crucial part of any marketing communication, there is a pressure on the writer that this is the point where the deal will make it or break it. While actually, this shouldn’t be the only point, it is admittedly a delicate issue we should have a closer look at.

At the end of the landing page

Traditionally, on the landing pages, it is somewhere towards the end after the value proposition is explained, all the benefits are clear and excuses are treated. The reader consciously and unconsciously balances between the values and the price, so it is the writer’s job to make the value side very strong.

However, as users got used to this traditional way of presenting the price, some of them scroll right to the price presentation to find it out, skipping the value proposition. And this is not the only reason why we should shortly list again the benefits and what the price includes (even things that are evident to you but probably not for the customer.)

How much it is worth

A popular technique is to say how much the product could be sold for, how much it cost to create it, but it is only x. Even better if the cost and the higher price is scattered throughout the whole page in the relevant copy. Like if you offer a course, you can say earlier on the landing which conferences and schools you attended to get the knowledge and how much it cost. Or how much you spent on experimenting until you got to the best conclusion you are sharing now.

Right after stating the price you can explain how you came to that amount.

You can use it for segmenting: if it is a high-end price in the industry, you can say that the product is not for everyone, and you segment with this price. Users will feel tempted to belong to those qualified customers who can afford it.

If the price is low-end, you’d better avoid users think that also the product/service is low-end. Give them a reason why you want them to have access to it at such an exceptional price (your mission e.g.).

You should be very careful with this, though, as you can end up over-explaining the price and seeming to think that the product is not worth it.

Start with the price

A brave and advanced technique is to start with the price. It can as well as be in the headline: “Get back to your pre-baby size in two months for just $xxx. “

With this, you position your offer right at the beginning as a good deal, and the customer will not worry about the price but read on to find out what is in. Obviously, this technique is recommended if you have a good price, but it doesn’t mean it has to be cheap. It just has to be well-priced compared to what you offer. Going forward, it is crucial to justify that the price is a good deal.

Emphasize the losses

An other aspect is to show the customer how much they lose by not buying your product. It is difficult to imagine the future and especially accept that things can turn out bad, so you have to specifically explain what might happen with them without your service, and how much they will regret not to have spent this amount of money and save with it.

Say that it is expensive

An amazing technique for advanced writers. You can come up with an excuse one of your earlier clients made, saying “It is bloody expensive.” This will definitely catch the attention of the user and make them read on. Here you really have to explain and prove why this excuse is dull and how your client later found out that it was the best deal of his life. To reach this your value proposition has to be excellent.

Better to avoid

There are a few things to avoid when presenting the price:

–         Hiding the price or part of it. You should be clear about all the additional costs, package and handling, and if it is a membership, it should be clear.

–         Still, many sites use the ‘Ask for a quote’ formula which pushed the reader to make the extra effort by contacting you. Even if you can not say a definite final price you show price ranges or some examples.

–         Saying “Only today”, or “Only for you” if it is not true. You lose credibility if these statements are there for weeks.

–         Exaggerating the value of the product or service. Use statements about how much it is worth you can justify.

A brilliant content marketing idea: a real estate agency publishing an article as the diary of an agent.

It starts with a cute story of a fox stealing the high heels of one of the prospects during the flat viewing. Great opening the catch the attention.

Then it goes into more details – but not in a boring way – how they successfully closed deals, rented flats which are very difficult to rent, and how smoothly they handle their cases.

It is a perfect mixture of the ‘behind the scenes’ factor to keep me reading and the implication of how professional they are. Unconsciously I feel by the end, I really want to work with them. Isn’t it the easiest way to get me there?

Image and copy by Timea Kadar, www.writefab.com Read my quotes about words here: www.instagram.com/writefabulously