Digital Marketing - Appgain

Retargeting on Instagram: Get your ads to right people

Instagram is probably the most popular social media channel today. Especially the younger generation uses it over the older giants like Facebook. It is, really one of the most influential channels to advertise on. But, as with all advertisement, you need to make sure that the ads will reach the right people. In this article, we will have a look retargeting on Instagram to get your ads shown to the interested people!

: Response on Instagram ads for 2014. Goes on to show the importance of Instagram as an advertising platform. Instagram has grown a lot since then. Source: Statista

Knowing who is interested: it’s all about pixels!

Your marketing budget is precious, and you need to make sure that it is spent on the right places. This is especially true for social media ads. Sure, you get to choose audiences and such, but those alone rarely get you where you need to be.

This is where retargeting comes into play. It means that you can target your Instagram ads towards people who have already shown interest in your campaign, and thus you can keep your message in their mind!

If you capture their Facebook Pixel Id with your product page/landing page etc, you will be able to target them specifically on many social media venues, including the Instagram!

Lookalike audiences: retarget your mailing list

Another way to create retargeting groups for Instagram ads is to upload your mailing list to it, and let Instagram to find accounts linked to those addresses.

This way you will be able to target the people in your marketing list on social media channels like Instagram too. Your ads will be shown to people that you have already reached out to, keeping your campaign visible to them at all times!

So the pixels or lookalike audiences, which is the better way of retargeting on Instagram ads?

Depends, they rather complement one another than replacing. Depending on the context, one can be more beneficial over the other.

If you already have an existing audience with their email addresses available to you, than lookalike audiences will help you with directly going for them when retargeting on Instagram ads.

The thing with that method, however, is that it is for when you already have an audience. Pixel method, however, is more useful when attracting new audiences. Anyone who has visited your product page can become a target for your retargeting on Instagram.

Also, there is no reason why you can’t employ them simultaneously to reach both worlds!

Ok so, where do I start retargeting on Instagram?

First off, having a web presence is a great start to find your retargeting audience. When you have an SEO optimized landing page for your campaign, people searching for what you offer will find your page. This, in turn, lets you collect their Pixel ids, so that you can use these in retargeting on Instagram ads. When you add a lead form to your landing page with an offer for leaving their email address, you can also collect a mailing list, which can be utilized in creating lookalike audiences.

Appgain has the necessary ingredients to make this very easy for you! With our Mobile Deep Pages technology, you can create your mobile optimized and SEO ready landing pages in a matter of minutes. No need to worry about hosting etc either, as we would be hosting the pages on our own servers for you. You can also use your own custom domains for these pages as you like.

Not only will you be able to collect Pixel ids of visitors you can attract to site, but you can also use our ready-built lead form functionality to also create a database of interested people with their information.

Moreover, since they are very easy for people to share on their social media by clicking a single icon, people can lead their networks to your pool for retargeting on Instagram.

Still, got questions? Do not hesitate to reach out and Contact Us! Request Demo now.

Marketing with QR codes: Measure your success!

Any marketing campaign is as effective as the knowledge used in their construction. Without information, you can’t form a useful retail strategy. You need to know your target audience, what do they like, where are they, when they are most active, etc. You try many different channels and campaigns, but which is more effective and which doesn’t quite work? Do you know that you can measure the marketing success of your efforts, just by doing some marketing with QR codes?

: Marketing with QR codes is a great way to bridge your online and offline marketing efforts.

Using QR codes with your campaigns is a great way to introduce users to your digital marketing funnel. It is easy and convenient for users to scan them and get an offer or find out more about the product. You in return can get a measure of your marketing success if you use the right tools.

But how can QR codes help me measure marketing success you ask?

Well with using the modern marketing automation and analytics tools of course. Since a QR code links to a digital resource, this can be used to gather attribution and analytic information. When you have a person scan your campaign QR code, for example, it is possible to learn valuable information like their location, time of scanning, the platform they are using, etc. You can also use this to geofence your campaigns to specific areas.

Another simple trick to try would be using different QR codes for variations of the same campaign to test the effectiveness of the variables you change.

OK, I want to do some marketing with QR codes… So what do these platforms do for me then?

In our case, Appgain will embed a smart deep link in the QR code generated for you. This link will grab all this important data for you, and you will see this info in neat reports in your Appgain panel.

The links will also make the users’ experience much more convenient, as they are context-aware, and will take the user to the right link depending on their platform. This ease of onboarding and favorable user experience led our clients to enjoy greatly improved conversion rates!

Another bonus is that you can use QR codes to link people to another feature we offer: the mobile landing page! So that they will be greeted by a nice, mobile-friendly and content-rich page where you can deliver your message with effect. But the real beauty of these pages is not even this! People who get to your landing page can subscribe to notifications from it, thus you will have a database of users interested in the campaign without collecting any contact details! You can remarket with a high degree of precision thanks to this user list. Moreover, these web push notifications do not need to have an app installed, and they work on desktop systems in addition to the mobile ones!

Finally, using a platform with Appgain for QR codes will allow you to efficiently run both traditional and digital media campaigns together at the same time.

Don’t forget, the more information you have, the better your retail strategy can be.

So, marketing with QR codes can bridge your offline and digital marketing spaces into a physical one, thus let you measure marketing success.

Still, got questions? Do not hesitate to reach out and Contact Us! Request Demo now.

QR codes in marketing: Phygital bridge between online & offline!

Today, both online and offline media are vital to your marketing campaigns. They both have wide reaches into different audiences, and one can cover where the other may not be easily visible. Although they are virtual vs physical in nature can make it difficult to run them together seamlessly. So can you even bridge your offline and online marketing together? Of course, you can, just use QR codes in marketing! Let us have a look at how!

: “Are QR codes dead?” we often hear being asked. On the contrary, the use of QR codes in marketing is the bridge between digital and physical media! Hence the term “phygital”.

QR codes in marketing: Connection between the worlds!

Are QR codes dead? This question seems to be a popular one… Well, QR codes in marketing are quite alive and kicking 😉 They have this important position of being the bridge between online and the offline. They are, the heralds of phygital marketing!

Since pretty much everybody has a smart device nowadays, they can scan and use the QR codes pretty easily. Just incentivize them, offer rewards for using the QR code to let them into your digital marketing funnel.

These codes can be printed on any media: flyers, coupons, billboards, bus stops, or even on digital signage… Where you will use QR codes is only limited by your imagination!

These codes allow you to link people from any offline media to any digital content, and, with use of the right platforms, also give you ability to retarget these users, and gain valuable information from them like where the best buyers come from, which campaign performs best, etc.

Now, yes, online and offline marketing campaigns are connected great! But what’s the benefit? How can I use QR codes to bridge online and offline marketing?

There are multiple things that you can do, let’s look at them one by one.

Do you have an app? Use offline ads and get them to download it!

Apps can be either the meta or a channel in a marketing campaign. Since smart devices are everywhere, apps are always with us, so they are a great marketing channel.

However, for an app to be profitable, you need many downloads. There are many ways to achieve this. ASO and SEO efforts being the first two that comes to mind.

However, you can get people to know of, and even directly download your app even when they aren’t browsing the internet or app stores.

Let’s say that you hand out promotional items, perhaps in an event. Brochures, or a nice, branded notebook. Feature your QR code link there with an offer for additional benefits to app users.

Someone who is already positively influenced with the experience in the gift item will be more likely to check out the offer of the app, and you can gain users easily like that.

By turning QR codes into Dynamic and Trackable QR codes, Smart Deep Links technology makes it easy for users to get onboard within the apps. These context-sensitive links provide the following benefits:

They will take the user to their destination regardless of the platform they are using.
Let’s say they don’t have your app and are using an iPhone, the link will take them to download the app from App Store.
If they are using an Android device instead, the same link will take them to Play Store page of the app.

Handout coupons

Coupons and vouchers are a great way to build bridges with potential customers. It is even better if you get them to scan a QR code to enjoy the benefits. This way you will be able to track the success of your campaign, and even potentially build a database of users for later remarketing.

: Coupons and vouchers are a popular customer loyalty and marketing tool in many industries, such as retail market. When used together with smart QR codes, they are the incentivizes of the phygital marketing.

This is usually a great option for food and beverage venues for example. But it can be used in other services and products as well. The retail market would be one of those, for example.

Do you have a great landing page? Well, let people see it!

While a flyer or a billboard is great in their own right, a web page can feature so much rich media content that can not.

This way you can really get two types of media to mutually support each other. People can see a physical ad anywhere, in public transportation, in a cafe, just anywhere… You web content, on the other hand, can include many images, videos, text, and even interactive elements. These can help you convey the message of your product/service much more strongly.

Just put the link to your web content inside a QR code and feature this prominently on your offline ads, and reap the rewards.

Know what your ads are doing

Information is the greatest strength in marketing. You need to know many things to achieve the most successful campaigns. Who is the best audience to target? What do they want? Where are they? What time they are most likely to buy? Do they respond better to this or that kind of campaign? Marketing is hardly the cheapest thing when you don’t know what is working and what isn’t! Are you doing it right, or are you just losing money? Information is paramount in knowing this and adjusting accordingly.

However, collecting all this information may not always be the easiest thing to do. Well, at least it wasn’t always, but now marketing automation and analytics tools let you have this power at the tip your fingers!

Though, unless you integrate offline and online campaigns, their powers will only work in the digital realms.

This is where QR codes come to play! They can help with getting data from your offline campaigns too.

Retarget people who look at your offline marketing materials

Giving people an incentive to scan that cool little QR code on your ads will make it possible for automation platforms to retarget them later.

First off, you may ask the user to fill out a contact form to enjoy the benefit you offer. They may give an email or phone number.

Almost uniquely among the platforms, Appgain also enables you to get a database of interested users without even asking their contact information. As you may know, some users don’t quite like giving personal info to marketing campaigns. With our web push notification feature, they can just subscribe to your notifications and then you will be able to retarget them with notifications even if they are on a desktop system.

How can you use offline and online marketing together? How do you employ QR codes in marketing?

: QR codes will let your online marketing efforts work on physical media too, here you can see how it would work for a retail market case

Well of Course With Appgain! Appgain gives you the opportunity to make the best use of the QR code’s powers, and adds more to the pack! The answer to “are QR codes dead?” is a resounding no, and our platform is ready to provide you with all the benefits phygital marketing and more.

Retarget your customers on social platforms, with notifications, SMS or email. With Dynamic, Colorful and Branded QR codes, our offer is feature-rich, and besides, we offer not just a QR code platform, but a whole marketing solution!

Still, got questions? Do not hesitate to reach out and Contact Us! Request Demo now.