If you’ve run a digital ad campaign using FieldTest, you already know how easy we make it to create and publish high performance digital ads online. With the ability to upload custom banners in all major sizes and formats, promoting your brand online has never been simpler. There is one element of the platform that sometimes gets overlooked, however; a secret weapon of sorts that we built specifically to deliver the best possible results on our platform. No we haven’t perfected a magic ROAS multiplier button, but when used properly it’s close! I’m talking about our Nearly Native ad unit and ad builder tool.

The Nearly Native ad unit was designed by our team of marketing professionals and engineers with decades of experience in the digital marketing world to be the most versatile and effective ad unit possible, and was built exclusively for use with the FieldTest platform. What does this mean? It means that when you take the proper steps and set them up correctly, you have a powerful marketing tool at every stage of the funnel. 

Today we’ll talk about how you can use the Nearly Native ad unit either as an effective supplement to your display banners or even as their own flagship ads at every stage of your marketing funnel in order to drive the best possible results for your ad campaigns. Let’s start at the top:

Phase 1: Awareness

The awareness stage is one of the most important ones to nail from a creative perspective. Unless you are coming to FieldTest with a wealth of traffic and audience data in the can this will be the first impression you’ll make with most of your customers. It is imperative that you absolutely knock your creatives out of the park in order to hook your potential customers and keep them interested as they travel downfunnel. 

The traditional wisdom in the awareness stage is that you win customers by presenting them with large scale banners using your best imagery and branding. This ensures that your intenders notice your brand and it sticks with them as they begin to shop for your product. This wisdom remains true, but when it comes to nailing an awareness campaign it's not the whole picture. The 300x250 Nearly Native ad unit can be deployed with extreme effectiveness in awareness, even with its more subtle, editorial style. 

Just how exactly? Well let’s put it in perspective. This stage is all about making a good impression with your potential customers and presenting them with ads that will make enough of an impact that they click through and trigger your pixel, allowing you to retarget them downfunnel. Yes this is easily achieved using big graphic banners such as the 300x600 and 970x250, but they can be expensive to produce and experiment with typically higher CPMs and CPCs. Luckily, that’s not the only way to make an impression with your customers. The FieldTest Nearly Native ad unit is an elegant and highly customizable way to promote targeted content with headlines that speak directly to the needs and interests of your intenders. With much lower publishing costs than a more coveted large scale banner placement, the FieldTest Nearly Native ad unit allows you to produce low cost, highly targeted ads that will speak directly to your customers in a way that feels personalized and will make a lasting impression. 

One last thing to keep in mind that is relevant in all stages of the funnel but particularly in awareness is the fact that the 300x250 is one of the few banners that is able to be delivered on mobile web, which accounts for 60% of internet traffic. Those huge beautiful banners you made may be impressive to look at when they get published above the fold on your favorite news site, but without a 300x250 to supplement it you are leaving the majority of potential customer traffic on the table. The FieldTest Nearly Native ad unit provides a high impact way to deliver messaging to you customers wherever they browse, either on their computers at home or at the office, or on their phones anywhere in between.

Phase 2: Consideration

Now that you’ve set up a highly effective awareness ad campaign and begun driving traffic to your site with highly targeted and customized editorial awareness ads, it’s time to continue your success and help push your new potential customers down the funnel towards conversion. Luckily, the FieldTest Nearly Native ad unit is built for just this purpose.

The consideration phase of the marketing funnel is an exciting one to prepare for. You’ve already got your customers interested, now it is time to make the pitch for them as to why your product or service is the best possible solution for them. This can be done with display banners, but pound for pound there is no better way to communicate these ideas to your customers than a well-designed, well thought out series of editorial ads. 

By taking a look at the successes of your top of funnel marketing campaigns you’ll find yourself with a pretty good idea of what messaging is working and who it is working with. This will act as a blueprint for your downfunnel marketing, making your job in the consideration phase (and lower) as simple as continuing a conversation with your customers. Did your hiking intenders really love your mountain puns in awareness? Continue that conversation in consideration by promoting your blog post that speaks specifically to that interest. Did a certain call to action really blow the rest of your creatives out of the water in the top of funnel stage? Reword and recycle those ideas that are working in order to keep the interest strong and keep your future customers returning to your site. 

It’s also important to remember that the consideration phase will likely contain a certain number of lookalike, or LAL, intenders: people who have similar interests and browsing patterns to those who clicked through in the awareness phase. These intenders will come into the lower funnel without having seen an awareness ad and will be picking up the conversation from the mid-funnel. Not to worry, however, they are already interested in your product and just as likely to click on your mid-funnel ads as your awareness intenders if not more! The key here is to keep the tone conversational and informative in order to allow them to see just what makes your brand stand out, no matter what stage of the funnel they are in.

Phase 3: Action

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You’ve used the Nearly Native ad unit to build high impact, low cost ad campaigns that inform your customers and keep them intrigued all the way through the marketing funnel down to the last stage: Action. Here there is almost nothing that can beat the Nearly Native ad unit in price per performance. If the upper and mid funnel stages are where it practices the fundamentals of dribbling and 3 point shots, the action stage is where the Nearly Native unit gets to do its tomahawk dunks. 

As we’ve discussed previously, the beauty of the Nearly native ad unit is that it allows you to have a direct and informative conversation with your customers, and nowhere is that conversation more important than in the final pitch to sale. Luckily, nowhere is that pitch better made than in an elegant editorial style ad unit. By using the highly readable and customizable Nearly Native ad unit to retarget customers with discount codes and calls to action you have the perfect platform to make them an offer they can’t refuse. FieldTest clients who build effective upper and mid funnel campaigns then drop a discount code for 10% off or free shipping into their headlines in this stage and see their sales skyrocket. We found that clients who offer a modest discount in the action phase saw their conversion rate increase from 3-5x over what it was without. Talk about a slam dunk! 

Good conversation makes for a good relationship

With digital marketing it’s all about having a conversation with your customers. From the first time you meet to the final push to convert, successful brands know that you have to build a relationship with your customers that is informative, relevant, and respectful of their needs. There is absolutely no better way to have this conversation with your customers than with editorial style ads on the FieldTest platform. With full customization ability and the power of our hundreds of thousands of audience segments at your fingertips you’re sure to strike the right tone with the right audience while using the right ad unit: the FieldTest Nearly Native.

Get in touch to find out how FieldTest can help you build highly customized ad campaigns that strike the right tone with your customers