You want to be different from the rest and expand beyond Facebook ads. Perhaps you’re just starting to use online advertising and are looking for the best cost-effective way to do so. It is important to start building your native strategy as soon as possible.

Native advertising can be used for any purpose, no matter what it may be. Native advertising is a great way to get your ads integrated into premium websites such as CNN, The Guardian, CNN, and HuffPost. It costs just $0.015 per click. It sounds great, doesn’t it?

To make your ads work, you need to create a strategy and then follow it. This post will show you how to prepare, launch, and optimize your first native advertising campaign for your fashion label.

Let’s define native advertising first

What is native advertising?

Native advertising is paid advertising where ads are designed to match the form and function of the media they are displayed on. Native ads are typically served by third-party platforms, which partner with publishers to display your ads on their websites.

Native advertising is particularly effective for eCommerce brands as it allows them to reach large audiences and has control over the placements of their ads.

What native ads look like in the page content

Native ads are often clearly identified with ‘paid content’ and sponsored labels for ethical reasons.

How fashion brands approach native advertising

You will often see ads from fashion brands among the many native advertising examples.

Velasca’s campaign aims to increase brand awareness through storytelling. Some people will feel encouraged to continue navigating the website and to get into Velasca’s marketing channel after they have visited their site.

While some may be tempted to bounce after seeing the video, they are likely to remember this campaign when they need to purchase quality shoes.

Fashion brands often use native advertising to run campaign sales leads.

Native advertising can also be a great way to increase your profits as an affiliate for fashion brands. Native ads are often used by affiliate marketers to promote products through affiliate links.

What is your native advertising strategy?

Before you begin campaign creation, consider how your native advertising strategy will be aligned with your overall marketing plan, and, what’s more, your buyer’s journey.

Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Or capture leads? Before you launch your campaign, it’s important to know how to keep visitors on your site or move them to the next stage.

Fashion brands should make it easy for buyers to navigate their buying journey. However, not everyone who sees your ads will be ready for purchase.

It will be much easier to run a native advertising campaign if you have a blog. Your blog posts can be used as content for campaigns or you can retarget blog readers to further the funnel.

You can combine native advertising with other marketing campaigns like email marketing and SMM if that is not the case.

You can prepare a plan to help you convert leads by creating an email capture campaign with native ads. What kind of content will you send your newsletters with?

Your goals will determine how native advertising fits into your marketing strategy. Let’s get started with defining our goals.

Set goals

You must set goals at the beginning of every marketing campaign. Native advertising is no exception.

Advertisers typically choose one of these objectives:

• Increase website traffic
• Attract leads
• Drive sales

Once you have chosen one, you will need to be more specific.

Do you want to increase website traffic? Next, determine the visitors you wish to reach and their behavior metrics. Is the bounce rate of 55% acceptable?

Are you aiming to drive leads or sales? This will allow you to determine not only how many conversions are you looking for but also how much each conversion should cost. What CPA (cost per Action) is considered effective?

Your target CPA can be calculated based on the revenue per customer and the conversion rate.

If your product is $100 and your margin is 40%, then you will get $40 per conversion. You will need to calculate the conversion rate for each lead to calculate the cost per lead. Let’s assume that 1 in 5 leads will convert into customers. This is a 20% conversion rate. Multiply $40 by 0.2 to get $8. This is your CPL.

Your goals will guide your actions in optimizing and preparing native advertising campaigns. The optimization process begins once you have launched. You can identify and fix performance problems by having a clear vision of your goals.

Budget allocation

How can you determine how much to allocate for your native advertising campaigns?

It’s better to make estimates that don’t match real numbers than to run a $20-30 experiment. Then, you can be informed by actual results.

To determine the maximum amount of money you can spend, use the data from your CPC, CTR, and other metrics. Because you will judge new campaigns by their potential for better results once you have identified their strengths and weaknesses, and optimized them.

Define your target audience

Your target audience is located where? Are they more likely to shop on desktop or mobile devices?

These answers will help you choose the best native advertising platform and define your targeting options. (See the next step).

When it comes to targeting options, it is always a good idea not to go as far as your instincts may suggest. Then, narrow your focus gradually, if necessary.

Many native ad platforms also offer interest targeting. However, unlike Facebook ads where this approach has proven highly effective, native ads perform better when there are more options such as geo- and device-targeting.

Choose the right platform to place native ads

It is crucial to choose the right native advertising platform for your campaign to get the best results.

There are many platforms to choose from. Many platforms have large publisher networks around the globe, while others are great for targeting specific audiences.

DSPs (demand side platforms) are a type of native advertising platform that has exclusive publisher networks. They can give you access to the inventory of several native ad sites at once. If you are new to native advertising it is a good idea to start with a basic ad platform like Taboola or Outbrain.

Create campaign content 

With your goals in mind, you can choose or create content assets that you wish to promote. This content will allow you to qualify the audience who clicks on your ads.

We have already shown the types of content that may be of interest to buyers at different stages in their journey.

These three stages (awareness and consideration, followed by decision) are almost always in line with 3 types of objectives: traffic growth, lead generation, and customer acquisition. If you want to attract the right people to help you achieve your goals and get the best results, ensure that your message is linked to the appropriate step of the buyer’s journey.

These are some examples of native advertising strategies that can be used for different purposes:

Native ad strategies can increase traffic

The campaign content must be attractive to new visitors and answer any questions they may have. Do not try to be too promotional, but instead offer something engaging, useful, or surprising.

• How-tos. Example: How to look stylish on a rainy day.

• Stories:Examples: Marilyn Monroe, One of Hollywood’s Most Iconic Beauties

• Seasonal content. Examples: 11 Fall Outfit Ideas

• Lists. Example: Top 10 Fashion Tips from Stylish Women.

Follow the lead

A lead magnet is an incentive that encourages people to share their content information with others. These lead magnets are often used by beauty and fashion brands:

• Quizzes. Example: What is my style?

• Discounts. Take 20% off your first order.

• Giveaways. Example: Get Two Looks at Dockers Europe.

• Consultations are free. For example, get Fashion Tips from our Online Personal Stylist.

Your native ad strategy can help you acquire customers

• Sales. Example: Sale on Clothing at example.com – Save up to 50% on the Summer Collection

• Lists. Example: Here are the 5 Essential Work Outfits.

• Customers who are already customers can receive special offers. This content is great for retargeting campaigns.

• Seasonal content. Example: 10 Best Summer T-Shirts For Men.

Make ads

Your headlines must be catchy and truthful to attract as many people as possible who might be interested in what you have to offer. Quality thumbnails should be related to your campaign message.

These are the best practices to create native ads that work.

• Your messaging should be included in your headlines

• Keep it simple.

• In your headlines, mention a call for action.

• Photos are better than illustrations.

• You can test multiple creatives. Do not pause ads that are already in production.

• Taboola trends to see which images and headlines are hot in various verticals.

Keep optimizing your campaigns

Once you have launched your first native ads campaigns, it is time to track, test, and optimize. You can check the performance data daily and make any minor adjustments as soon as you spot any problems.

If your campaigns aren’t spending your daily budget on advertising, you can increase your CPC slowly.

Wait until you have enough data from previous campaigns before you launch new tests. These lessons will help you save time and prevent the same performance problems in future campaigns.

To test new creatives and targeting options or campaign content, I recommend you also launch new ads or campaigns. This will help you identify the factors that affect campaign performance and scale.