← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Creative strategies for designing scroll-stopping social media ads
00:20:14
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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of.
- [00:40]
Jordan Cooney
Search Podcast, Jordan Cooney hello SEOs and marketers. My name is Jordan Cooney from Pre Visible. Joining me today is Akvila DeFazio, who is the president at Akvertise, which specializes in digital marketing services offering a wide range of solutions to help businesses increase their online presence and and reach their targeted audiences effectively.
- [01:03]
Podcast Announcer
This podcast is also sponsored by Ahrefs. What if I told you that you could monitor your website's SEO, health backlinks and organic rankings at no costs? Sounds too good to be true. Well, it's not, because my friends at Ahrefs just launched Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. Ahrefs new Webmaster Tools product quickly helps you improve your site's visibility by pointing solutions to over 100 technical issues that might be holding your search performance down. Plus AWT monitors for backlinks so you'll know the most linked to pages and how those links are affecting your rankings. And AWT shares what keywords your website ranks for and compares how you stack up against competitors for key metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty and traffic value. Look, monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools and now, thanks to Ahrefs, that's not the case anymore because AWT will help you monitor your SEO, health, backlinks and keywords for free. And no, it's not one of those 14 day free trial offers. It's a powerful site audit tool that will keep working for you for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.com AWT that's a H R E F S.com.
- [02:20]
Jordan Cooney
AWT today, Advila and I are going to discuss creative strategies for designing scroll stopping social media ads. Okay, here's my conversation with Agvila DeFazio, the President at Akvertise. Agvila, welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast.
- [02:37]
Akvila DeFazio
Hi Jordan, thank you for having me.
- [02:39]
Jordan Cooney
So we don't get social media paid experts on the show often. Not often enough, at least to be candid. And this is a Great opportunity for our listeners because it really is going to open, I think, the door to how, in my opinion, how we're all evolving in the digital landscape. And it doesn't matter if you're an SEO, if you're in social media, if you're in content marketing, your digital efforts are in a great transformation at this moment. And I think that by and away, our topic today largely is focused on these strategies, how these strategies are changing. And obviously I think that whatever we can learn from social media can be applied to our SEO efforts as well. So maybe by way of introduction, tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background, share a little bit about your successes in your space, and then we can dive into our topic today.
- [03:40]
Akvila DeFazio
Sure. So I've been working in paid media for 17 years now. I've been running my agency for the last 10 to celebrate it in October.
- [03:48]
Jordan Cooney
Congrats.
- [03:49]
Akvila DeFazio
We work primarily with e commerce brands. Travel. Thank you. Travel apps, Consumer legion. So more B2C instead of B2B. Lead generation and sometimes entertainment industry clients as they they come through, which can be fun once in a while. We work across all social networks, so From Meta to TikTok, whether it's, you know, still on or not, to Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, even through Hulu, Disney ads. So a little bit of everything. I know that that last one was a bit of an outlier, but we got into the beta two years ago and we've had a client there. Yeah, in a nutshell, that's what I've been doing. And some wins or who we've worked with in the past. We worked with postmates through their IPO process. They brought me on as an audit, then a consultant for two other engagements after that, which was really interesting to just be a part of that, even though it's just a small piece of that whole company. But it was really cool to experience that working at a company of that caliber, to, you know, partnering up with the Rock Dwayne Johnson for collabs with some of my dessert clients that I've had for different shipping companies. And yeah, I just worked on a lot of fun things over the years. So I feel like my skills are transferable across different client verticals, but it keeps things fun and interesting as our industry evolves.
- [05:06]
Jordan Cooney
I love it. I love it. And that's really cool to hear the diverse nature of your clients, but also what that probably means in terms of the creative ads, in the way you approach building ads for many of these clients. You know, we're kind of on the eve of this jarring experience with TikTok.
- [05:26]
Akvila DeFazio
Yeah.
- [05:27]
Jordan Cooney
And so literally like this week. And so, you know, maybe I just have to start there. You kind of broke that seal there. So I'm going to have to ask, like, what are your thoughts on this? How do you think it's going to change the digital landscape and the social media landscape if or how this changes and unfolds over the next? I think there was a deadline of 100 days or 90 days or something like that, but I'm not entirely sure exactly what the plan is here.
- [05:59]
Akvila DeFazio
Yeah, 75, I believe, but yeah, 75 days.
- [06:02]
Jordan Cooney
Okay.
- [06:03]
Akvila DeFazio
Yeah, I think that someone's going to buy it in the U.S. maybe that collective of, you know, Mr. Beast proposed and getting some billionaires together. It's such a huge money generator. It's made a huge impact on society, primarily in the US A lot of people's livelihood depends on it. A lot of brands rely on it as another channel to drive awareness and sales. I think it's going to evolve as we saw it turn off and then turn back on within 24 hours. You know, politics. Aside from that, it was interesting on the other channels of how that 24 hour shut off impacted, say, Meta Ads just because it is a strong contender, because it's been around the longest. A lot of brands mostly spend there, but. But CPMs or cost per impression increased over the last week, I think as brands scrambled and they're like, oh, it's actually going to turn off and they move their budget over so they didn't have such a huge dip. And I saw that across all of our client accounts over the last week. It kind of rebounded a little this week. So it's just interesting. It's really important to diversify your efforts. But I see that Cap Cut with the video editing app was also part of that temporary ban over the weekend. And a lot of people use that for TikTok and Instagram Reels type of content for editing. And Instagram announced yesterday that they're coming up with their own version of that in the next couple of weeks and you can register for it. So I think there's going to be a lot more competition on Meta's side to kind of fill in that gap for TikTok in case it does go away. But I think they're still going to find a way to do it. There's just so much money in it. I think they're just trying to do what's best for the people that get to make those decisions.
- [07:41]
Jordan Cooney
Right. I mean, that's kind of the interesting piece behind this, which is, you know, as one ecosystem goes through turmoil, you know, TikTok here, how it has rippling effects throughout the other environments and ecosystems and then there's a trickle down effect in terms of the, the, the additional tools or products that are, that are associated within this world. For our listeners who obviously are predominantly in the search world, we're going through change too, right? Discovery is changing super fast. It is evolving much faster than ever before. I mean, even just these last couple weeks, we've seen multiple reports that Google's market share has dipped below 90% in the US for the first or since 2015. And discovery, how consumers look for things, is changing super fast. I think it's the, arguably it's the fastest pace of how consumers discover products, services, ideas, concepts, information that we've seen since the beginning of social media now nearly 15 or so years ago. So my question for you is, as discovery changes, whether it be through LLMs, whether it be through the adoption and utility of language models into other services, as discovery changes, how should we be preparing ourselves? How are you preparing yourself in the social space for those changes and how should we all collectively in the digital space prepare ourselves?
- [09:12]
Akvila DeFazio
It all comes down to content. So you know, whatever medium or platform that you're developing it for, I think it's important to keep pushing that content so your brand can stand out. Because as you know, a lot of the younger Generation relies on TikTok for search. And it's like, you know, for us it's like we say Google it, but now search it up. And there's so many different ways, like with LLMs through TikTok and Google and just, you know, Microsoft too, that you can find what you're looking for. But I think it's important just to continue adapting to where people are, how they're looking to find what you're offering. And just being creative and coming up with that content, whether it's written or it's visual or also just repurposing older content, I think is just important to adapt with where the platforms are going and having these types of conversations of we don't have a crystal ball, but we can kind of see the trajectory of consumer behavior and just Internet behavior with people and just seeing like what do we think is coming next, like what's probable and then trying to have some future forward strategy in place of how to be visible in those areas.
- [10:16]
Jordan Cooney
I want to dive further there because building creative is, is a huge part of successful social media ads. Yeah, and us on the, on the, on the content marketing side or the SEO side, I don't think we spend enough time thinking about the quality of a piece of content. The quality of a creative asset regardless of its purpose or use, whether it be paid piece or organic or intended to influence versus just, you know, a pure paid placement. I'm curious, what makes a successful creative in your eye and why, why is it that when it's successful on TikTok, we're seeing these creatives again get repurposed across all media platforms or all social platforms? What, what drives that, that effort and, and, and how have you, what metrics or, or decisions do you use to, to make those choices?
- [11:09]
Akvila DeFazio
Yeah, great question. So I think TikTok really set the standard when it came out and exploded during COVID that format of video where it's really, you know, we've always needed a hook to get people to start watching more. Because no matter how interesting, entertaining, you know, educational the video is, people still drop off at a certain point. But on the advertising standpoint of that, it's really important to have a hook in that first three seconds because we look at some stop rates to see like, okay, can we get somebody to stop here? At least watch for a little bit. But if you're not showing your product or service or really making it visually or textually apparent as to what you're advertising, people are going to drop off at higher rates. So one thing that we do on the ad side and have the metrics for that is we can look at those hook rates and we know for different platforms what they might be like a good baseline for it. So say that your hook rate is really high, but your conversions, whether that's a lead sign up or a purchase is really low. You might take that as, okay, this is really interesting in the beginning, but then people drop off and then maybe go, you know, you look at click through rate of how many people go to the site from that piece of content and you can see that you are interested. But there's something where there's a drop off. So it's either, okay, do I need to work on the landing page or maybe do I work on the last, you know, the closing part of the video to really get that closing rate up. And the opposite, if you have a low hook rate but you have a high conversion rate, then you might want to say, okay, let's test different hook rates in the beginning. Whether it's a question, a statement or problem or solution, or you know, something shocking, usually works really well, but to find the right formula, that's kind of how we look at it and how we can optimize the performance and understand how people are engaging with that piece of content.
- [12:45]
Podcast Announcer
Time for a one minute break to hear from our sponsor, Pre Visible. So you're looking for SEO help and you got a couple of options. You could start replying to spam from agencies that claim they can get you to rank number one on Google. You can pay an hourly rate for a consultant who will inevitably nickel and dime you with hourly charges. Or you can work with a cookie cutter agency to quickly launch a strategy less project with low success rate. None of those sound very good now do they? Well, that's where Pre Visible's integrated consulting model comes in. Pre Visible draws From a collective 40 years of SEO and digital marketing experience to unlock your organic growth opportunities. They build custom solutions that combine strategy, technical expertise, content and reporting to effectively operationalize SEO for your business. Pre Physical's four stage approach ensures that your SEO programs thrive by starting off with a strategy first approach. Then they support you in your efforts to create quality content, help you identify technical issues, and most importantly, they'll work with your cross functional teams to integrate your SEO strategies to make sure that your SEO budget actually drives results, not just your agency's bottom line. So join brands like Yelp, eBay, Canva, Atlassian Square, all who rely on the SEO consultants at Pre Visible. For more information, go to Pre Visible IO that's Pre Visible. P R E V I S I B L E I O.
- [14:13]
Jordan Cooney
And when it comes to the actual content itself, I fully agree with everything you shared there, by the way. And I think for our listeners this is really important to think about how you use these metrics as it applies to all disciplines. But when it comes to the content itself, are there certain capabilities that we need to be thinking about that work better than historical other ads or other efforts? So what I mean by that is, and you even brought it up, you got to work with the rock on certain types of creative ads or social media campaigns. So what I'm curious to understand is, from your perspective, are we in a world where the asset that we utilize is changing because the world is changing in the way consumers discover things? So are different things more effective? Do we need to sell more chocolate bars like Mr. Beast? Like, what is it that really is working to drive success in our social creatives and ads? Huge question. Sorry.
- [15:14]
Akvila DeFazio
Yeah, huge question. I'm just thinking like, well, you know, it helps to have a seasoned actor or somebody with a That's a big known personality online or an influencer. But even just for smaller businesses, I think if you make it engaging and captivating and you use bold colors, you highlight all of the different senses. So, you know, visually, acoustically, textually, that really works well. But what I've kind of started seeing a few bigger brands do, like Rhode, they do makeup and it's Justin Bieber's wife, Hailey Bieber's company. And I've been keeping up with that just because I have some clients in the beauty space. And her marketing team, I think is doing a really great job because they're kind of going into basically. So say for lip gloss, they show like really juicy raspberries. And like, you visually know, like, oh, I don't like, not interested in the chapstick. But like, that looks so visually compelling and I know what a raspberry is like and it's fresh and it's like nature's candy. That, that type of marketing where you're activating other parts of your brain with those kind of sensory touch points. I really need to find the name of this again. That's working really well. So I'm talking to clients about how we can incorporate that as well to where that activates that other part of the brain to possibly accomplish more sales or whatever the goal might be. And just to stand out, because if people.
- [16:36]
Jordan Cooney
I absolutely love this.
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Akvila DeFazio
Yeah, right.
- [16:38]
Jordan Cooney
Yeah. This is super powerful because I think this is at the crux, even in our industry, in the SEO industry. This is the crux of, of the battle, which is anybody can create something nowadays with AI, you can just replicate anything that already exists. But what you can't replicate is creativity.
- [16:55]
Akvila DeFazio
Yeah.
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Jordan Cooney
And that creativity is driven by a lot of those sensory experiences. Either we hear it, we see it, we feel it, we touch it, we experience it. And like, if it's completely new and unfamiliar or it is, or it is familiar in a way that is very reassuring. Those creative capabilities, I think, is what makes something stand out.
- [17:18]
Akvila DeFazio
Absolutely. And just to, you know, I remember somebody telling me where, you know, if you stand back in the room, like, what do you notice first? Like, does it stand out amidst the background of the platform, whether it's, you know, dark or light mode? That's why, you know, having those visuals but also just standing out from everything else in the feed because it is overwhelming. There's so much information out there. It's like, how do you look at what's available currently and how do you one up that regardless of the media or whether it's textual or visual. So I think that that's really important and if you can find ways to incorporate that with your brand, I think you'll have success in the near future, if not immediately because not many people are doing that.
- [17:58]
Jordan Cooney
No doubt. No doubt, Absolutely. And so a segue here is like, I want to understand from your perspective, what are some of these creative assets that you're seeing working today or creative strategies? How are you working with design teams, how are you working with in house teams to build more effective social media ads and to call out these aspects like the example you just shared where it really just resonates with a consumer in a way that it hasn't resonated the lip gloss hasn't resonated with before. Right. I'm not a huge consumer of lip gloss, so I'm not exactly an expert, but I can, I can feel your story and I can see how consumers would be able to connect with the concept of the fruit and the beauty or the resemblance of that and then how it might connect back to, to the product that they may want to purchase.
- [18:52]
Akvila DeFazio
Oh, many ways. So my job has really changed from being like hyper segmented and finding pride and finding, you know, the right audience to target. But with AI coming in, that's changed so much to where over the last almost two years it's been an uptick in creative strategy. So, you know, working with those teams, telling them here's what works well in these platforms and what we're looking for. Here's another approach we might want to take from what's worked well and how do we like move it forward a little bit to stand out even more. And then I'll let the creative team, you know, they have that, that's their skill set. So it's a really collaborative process of, you know, here's best practices of what I need you to abide by but also have the creative freedom to be on brand but also to be creative enough so we're standing out on the different platform that we're running ads on. I'll usually write the ad copy. Sometimes I work with creative teams, especially if it's. There's a lot of legal involved. I've had some clients where like we really had to run a lot by legal just to make sure that everything's good. But since you mentioned LLMs, I'm a huge fan of taking the data that we have so say customer reviews and testimonials, organic social comments and importing those into say ChatGPT and then having, you know, having two identifiers for, you know, out of this data set. How many people mentioned this keyword? Like, it's terrific, you know, I'm a working mom or I'm a tech enthusiast. And then you can pick out those Personas and then maybe put some stats behind it of like, you know, we have over a thousand five star reviews where like, you can really make that data work for you and put that into your ads as either overlay text or the actual text that, you know, accompanies the visual part of it. So everything from like emotional language and sentiments to comparisons to complementary products. So I've been doing that where it's like, oh, I've had this shoe for, you know, 10 years and it's been really great. But now I bought the socks that match with it and they fit perfectly and it's like addressing those or one thing that I really like with one client is finding unique things that we don't even know about from the marketing standpoint, but from consumers are saying that for a shoe client, their goal is not to cure or prevent plantar fasciitis. But a lot of people are saying, hey, the shoe actually alleviated a lot of discomfort I had. It's like, oh, now we can angle this with maybe some UGC or work with creators that are in that space, maybe a podiatrist and then that gives us other things. So that's the thing that I can find out and then provide to the team and the creative team especially and say, how do we make this work together visually and then showcase that in front of the right people? So, yeah, long story. Long. Sorry.
- [21:28]
Jordan Cooney
No, that's great. I love it. And that's a great place for us to wrap up this episode of the Voices of Search podcast. Thank you to Agvila DeFazio from Akvertise for joining us. In part two of this interview, which we'll publish tomorrow, Agvila and I are going to discuss finding your perfect audience with targeted meta ads. If you can't wait until our next episode and would like to learn more about Akvila, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our show notes. Or you can contact her on X where her handle is aviladifazio or visit her company website.
- [22:02]
Podcast Announcer
Okay, thanks to Jordan Cooney, the founder of Pre Visible. If you'd like to get in touch with Jordan, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes. You can contact him on Twitter. His handle is J.T. cooney. That's J, T, K O E, N E or you can visit his company's website, which is Previsible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O and a special thanks to Ahrefs for sponsoring this podcast. Monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools, but that's not the case anymore, thanks to Ahrefs because they just launched their Ahrefs Webmaster Tools product, which monitors your SEO health, helps you keep track of your backlinks, and gives you the insight into what keywords are performing for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.comAWT that's Ahrefs a h r e f s.comAWT just one more link in our show Notes I'd like to tell you about if you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voicesofsearch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is benjschab B E N J S H A B and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day during the work week. So hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, remember the answers are always in the data.