Native Advertising + Visual Content in Social Media Marketing

When people ask me what kind of social media campaign or advertising that I have done,  I would always mention that I am also familiar in creating visual content for native advertising. They would usually pause and ask what is native advertising?

If you look up the term of native advertising in the web, most commonly you will encounter this meaning:

“Native advertising is a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform’s editorial staff. The word “native” refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appears on the platform”-wikipedia

I would always have trouble getting people to understand the meaning above, so I decided to explain it using my own understanding that would make it easier :

“Conventional advertising refers to advertisements (video, writing, post, picture,etc) that highlight the benefits or features of the product in order to attract viewers in buying the product. The main goal of the advertisement is ‘buy me because I am good for you’, ‘buy me because when you wear me, you will look cool’ or etc. The advertiser is persuading the viewers that they should buy the product.

But in native advertising, advertiser use different approach because they create something that gives value, beneficial informations or problem solving idea that is appreciated by the viewers. The viewers does not recognize it as an advertisement, but instead they embrace it as something that they should take heed and would  gladly engage with by sharing it. Because they feel it would benefit others too.”

My first experiment in native advertising started when my client asked me to create a series of visual content  that they could use in their paid advertisement on Facebook. We already produce series of visual content for their daily post for content marketing.

So, we create a visual content that highlight the USP of their product that would help solve the problem of the viewers. We came out with a series of visual content that implement native advertising into it. It is during Ramadan, the month that muslim people are fasting for one month and usually during this time, most people especially woman are trying to loose their weight fast. Looking into this trend, we create a visual content of alternatives or solutions that can help them achieve their goal.

The product USP is goat’s milk that is mixed with dates, so we research for 4 simple  menu and recipes that contain goat’s milk and dates in the ingredients and created it into visual content that implement native advertising.

The title of the visual content SECRETS ON HOW TO LOOSE 5KG IN RAMADAN .

Link to actual fb post: https://www.facebook.com/lazzsusukambing/posts/814563395345815

The post like manage to reach 1.6K, shared by 3,455 viewers and received 219 comment asking about the product.

I have read a few articles that claims native advertising is not considered as content marketing. I personally disagree because when I am involved in creating hundreds of visual contents for our client, we could hybrid it with native advertising which will produce two different function. Firstly, as a content marketing that give values to the viewers  which encourage engagement. Secondly, as an advertisement that would encourage the people to buy the product without actually telling them to buy.

Combination between visual content and native advertising does gives impact on how a brand should run the advertisement because online viewers are immune to the conventional marketing. When they see it as an advertisement, they would quickly scroll down through it to find a post that gives values to them instead.

Case Study : Full Visual Content + Native Advertising Campaign :