How do you overcome ad fatigue with social media and paid search ad campaigns?
Mick: I’m facing that problem at the moment with a client who’s doing quarterly ad campaigns. They’ve been working in this way for several years, and I’ve only recently taken on the account. I’m starting to point out the drawbacks to this strategy – you can’t deliver the same thing to an audience for three months, three days is probably the maximum now I would say!
It obviously depends on your platform, and years ago we might have been used to seeing the same ad for a brand on TV for a quarter or six months, and it was entertaining and funny because we only had a few channels. But now we want that kind of content updated all the time. To expect someone to engage with the same piece of content continually for a quarter is unwise. I suggest you update things at least weekly, and maybe even more if it’s a very important or specific campaign. This keeps things fresh and gives you the opportunity to test what works.
Alex: The burn rate of some of the ads we’re running through TikTok is a week max, ten days maybe. It needs to be updated weekly on TikTok, meta ads can be up for a little longer. Content creation needs to be done really cleverly to maximise time and budgets for your ads – batch film, make sure the content you capture can be reworked and reused in multiple different ways, you need to be really tactical when collecting material for your ads. Try to get organised on those shoots so you can refresh your ad content as much as possible.
Mick: It’s not just engagement we’re thinking about here, it also has an impact on conversions. I was looking at some stats from a few years ago where the conversion rate of a brand’s ads went from 23% down to 0.1% over a quarterly period purely because the same content had been delivered for those three months – that’s clear ad fatigue and it has an impact on your profitability.
Kate: Another really important approach is to lean into user generated content for your ads. When you’re working with influencers and generating that content make sure you’re using that for your paid ads, too.
