How to Create More Influence Using Ads
What if you could grow your influence without having to have decades of brand exposure, awareness or loyalty?
Luckily for you, in the modern age of digital marketing, there are dozens of robust platforms and network for running ads that have hungry buyers waiting to see your message.
While organic search and social efforts are effective, they take time to build and scale.
Ads, on the other hand, are an immediate faucet that you can turn on and off at will. Rather than living in fear of the next algorithm change, you can run ads and take back power for your personal brand, revenue and reach.
For those of you who are in a steady content rhythm and have a social following, ads are the next step for you to grow your organic results. You see, you’re already doing what it takes to run ads.
So many people tell me that they are afraid to run ads because they don’t have a big following, don’t want to come off as “salesy” or don’t have a multi-million dollar budget.
The truth is, though, that you can do a few things with ads that will build up your influence, make your brand seem bigger than it is, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to do it! And, you can do all of that without jeopardizing the integrity of your brand, mission and commitment to service.
Today I want to share with you three actionable tactics that you can implement to grow and supercharge your influence by leveraging the power of ads.
Let’s dive in…
Advertising Mindset for Influencers
Before we get into the tactics, it’s important that we take a step back and make sure we are approaching ads with the right mindset.
It wasn’t long ago that advertising was purely about awareness and untargeted mass media exposure. The goal was simple: get as many eyeballs on the product or service as possible.
With the rise of new media, there are now endless groups and hyper-targeted audiences waiting for a brand leader like you.
Although awareness is still an important factor in brand building, even more critical is your ability to connect with audiences on an emotional or one-on-one level.
Advertising has the capability to influence people and create this lucrative proximity in a number of ways.
Ads allow you to paint a picture of how we view ourselves and what many aspire to be. Ads have the power to shape our aspirations.
Which is why it’s so important to prioritize ads that evoke feelings, crafting stories behind your brand and products that inspire your audience.
This approach from a messaging and platform perspective allows you to build a relationship between your brand and a buyer. Your ability to make your ads feel more *human* in the process of building that relationship will guarantee more influence, brand loyalty, and sales.
Takeaway: Prioritize emotion and connection over seeking to win an immediate sale. It may take some nurturing in the long run, but out of it you’re sure to acquire loyal, lifetime buyers.
Build Your Winning Content Library
Building a content library may seem more difficult than it actually is. I’m here to tell you: it’s not rocket science!
You can use your existing content that has performed well with your audiences, and amplify it to gain influence (more on this in a moment…)
But a great starting point is to find your existing content that has the most comments, likes, and shares and begin to log each of these content pieces in your trusted system or “library.”
Keep this log up-to-date and frequently diagnose why the content resonated so well with your audience. If you know what content works (and why), then you can make more content like it.
And further, once you know what content works, you now know which content to amplify.
Which brings us to my next point…
Pro Tip: Building your Content Library doesn’t mean that you need to exclusively focus on the content YOU’VE created. When building your Content Library, don’t forget to include press mentions, interviews, and user-generated content. Strategically empower your followers and clients to share their experience with your training and services out on social media. These content pieces are third-party recommendations that carry more weight with potential customers and add instant credibility to your name.
Retargeting Warm Audiences with Ads Using Content from your Library
Now it’s time to take it a step further. After you have identified your winning content pieces, let’s amplify with retargeting!
Retargeting with ads works well because the audience already has a familiarity with your brand. Showing up again will increase their recall and likelihood to engage and buy.
Three tactics we suggest next are in the context of Facebook and Instagram ads, BUT many modern ad platforms have the same capabilities. So don’t worry if your audience hangs out somewhere else. The principles are the same.
Engagement Retargeting
You can amplify your content to people who have engaged with your content regardless of how they interacted with it.
For example, you can target someone who visited your page, engaged with a post, messaged your business, clicked a call-to-action button, or saved a post.
These people have moved into the “application” part of the funnel from the 3 A’s of Facebook and are ready for some retargeting!
Video View Retargeting
A picture is worth a thousand words, so what does that make video worth?
Either way, video engagement has proven to lift influence and sales, so you’ll want to make sure to show future content to people who have already watched your videos.
On Facebook and Instagram, you can target people who have watched video to varying degrees. Your options: 3 second view, 10 second view, and percent view (25%, 50%, 75%, and 95%).
Pro tip: Separate the video viewers engagement audiences in your content amplification targeting to see the value of each segment.
Website Visitor Retargeting
This cohort has the highest buyer intent. They’ve visited your website and are ready to move into the “action” part of the buying process. Better yet, they are already existing customers.
Naturally, we’ll want to make sure they see any future content you post.
To retarget them, build multiple segments based on different durations since they have last visited your site. I like to start with a 180-day audience (or six months) which is the maximum amount of time you can retarget against. Then, I’d build a 90, 60, and 30-day audience to test as well.
Pro Tip: Use workplace and job title targeting to show your content and ads to people that have the ability to show your content to millions. An example of this would be to target someone who works at The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, etc, to generate press coverage for your brand. One news article about you and your brand could multiply your growth.
Run a Follower Ad Campaign
No, this is not the same as “buying” followers!
The last low hanging fruit tactic to build your influence through ads is to craft and run a follower ad campaign.
This will give you the opportunity to invite someone to follow you and your personal brand, which will create the portal for showing them your content on a regular basis. As you already know, more touch points mean more ways to influence.
I’d start with targeting the audiences from above engagers, video viewers, and website visitors.
Here’s an example of one I did for my followers:
Final Thoughts…
No matter what stage you are at in building your personal brand, influence will always be a key component in building your brand’s legacy. Using ads to boost your influence will help to keep you top of mind and give you a leg up in comparison to your competition.
By building your winning content library, implementing engagement tactics, and supercharging your follower growth through specific campaigns, you’ll extend your influence faster than you previously thought possible.
There are lots of ways to build influence, but in the brave new digital world, leveraging ads is a surefire way to have control over the content that your most important prospects should see.
Go out and extend your influence. We’re cheering you on!
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