Brands use native advertising to reach audiences in a contextually relevant and non-intrusive way, which resonates well with consumers. Globally, the predictions are that advertisers will be moving 25% of their marketing budgets from traditional advertising to native advertising by 2022. According to Business Insider, native advertising will drive 74% of all advertising revenue by 2021. Marketers can create native ads in the form of consumer content, influencer marketing, topical articles, mobile apps, social media, eye-catching videos and stickers.

Stickers are an area where Viber has thrived for years, with over 2.5bn sent each month. Users love to share them and send them in a natural, conversational manner, which is exactly how brands also want to engage with users. That’s why we built a “Stickers Best Practice” guide (below).

We’ve analyzed the various sticker components and have provided tips and tricks to ensure your stickers are not only fun enough for our users, but interesting enough to drive results.

Text

Stickers are a fun and often new ad type for people to experiment with in their marketing. Having said that, many of the same words and types of text will and will not work. Be expressive, thematic and conversational. Don’t be offensive, careless and don’t just showcase your product without thinking of the context of how stickers get used by consumers. It will not resonate.

Visual

There is a massive opportunity to be creative with the stickers you create. The key is not to go overboard— build a vibrant, legible and cohesive sticker pack that ties back to your brand and/or campaign. Avoid turning your stickers into just another digital ad that disinterests users.

Audio

We already have users’ attention in the app for 30+ minutes every day per user, so give them something to hear too. Pairing the imagery with audio can have a tremendous impact on delivering your message as well as scaling the reach and exposure of your stickers. Testing both static and animated stickers with sound is crucial to understanding what works for your brand.

Pro tip: Use the most native form of ads on the market—the dos and don’ts of stickers.

Download the full infographic here.

Coca-Cola’s name speaks for itself. Seriously, who has never had a Coke in their life? For decades, they have done a brilliant job of celebrating life and bringing people together through their product. Well, Viber loves it too and that’s why we’re delighted to help Coca-Cola’s team power their “under-the-cap” sweepstakes.

Coca-Cola leveraged Viber’s business solutions to boost its mobile footprint, interact with consumers and create an integrated digital sweepstakes experience for our massive Bulgarian audience. Here’s the recipe for success:

• A branded Sticker Pack to announce Viber-exclusive under-the-cap program and direct users to the Public Account in a shareable way.
• A Public Account to give access to unique multimedia content.
• A Chatbot that engages followers to participate in the under-the-cap program and encourages them to share the fun with their friends and family.

Within a short time-span, Coca-Cola used their Public Account to distribute redemption codes, create hype and drive conversions.

“Our strong fan base paired with Rakuten Viber’s active Bulgarian audience and captivating product suite made this program an instant success,” said Stefan Radov, Social Media Manager, Coca-Cola

During the three-month program, Coca-Cola saw incredible results:

• 191K+ sticker pack downloads
• 298K+ stickers shared
• 29K+ redeemed under-the-cap codes
• 680K+ user-chatbot interactions
• 184K chatbot subscribers
• 30% conversion rate

Coca-Cola continues to inspire moments of optimism and bliss all over the world. Pairing this legendary brand with Viber’s innovative approach led to an interactive and high-performing experience for Coca-Cola fans.

Check out the success story in its entirety.

It isn’t news that marketing should be a revenue driving team for any B2B company, especially in the tech industry. Despite where the attribution might lie – whether it’s with sales and/or marketing –  marketers are more and more data-driven and have moved from being cost centers to ROI facilitators. Earlier this month at the Marketing Sector Conference, marketers from CACI, Communigator, Demandbase, LoyaltyLion, ON24, Passle and more connected over roundtable discussions on the latest in the MarTech world.

What’s most apparent, especially in a post-GDPR climate, is that B2B customers want to be engaged and not in any old fashion. Here’s a couple key insights from some of MarTech’s finest on engaging clients and prospects in a data-driven world:

Accelerating ABM Impact

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is one of the hottest trends in digital marketing. Why? Simple – it personalizes marketing programs to improve efficiencies for sales and marketing organizations. Leanne Chescoe, Senior Field Marketing Manager at Demandbase, talks about ABM’s impact on the way that they do marketing.

“At Demandbase, we operate on a “Demandbase for Demandbase” model and have just been named leader of the pack in Forrester’s New Wave Platform Report. What does that mean? Essentially we walk the walk and run an ABM strategy with a 100% sales-marketing alignment model. We found that ABM has helped us refine our activities to get twice as much from marketing programs than before and cut costs by nearly 52%. Because of that the way we think of traditional marketing activities, like events, or the way our techstack is built has drastically shifted. For instance, based on an ABM model, we have to have at least 30% of our target accounts present at an event in order to sponsor it. In the ABM strategy process, we spend a lot of time refining our target account lists and layer with intent data, and connect the dots from on-page engagement to notify sales reps directly in real time via Salesforce, Slack and email about their target’s actions. Deeper down the funnel we see that engagement optimizations directly impact our bottom line”.

Forming Human Connections on a Digital Scale

According to the latest Demand Gen Report on content preferences, 66% of buyers say they prefer webinars to other content formats and most webinar attendees’ view time is an average of 56 minutes according to ON24’s 2018 Webinar Benchmarks Report. Joe Hyland, Chief Marketing Officer at ON24, explained how webinars for B2B marketers are a powerful tool that turns behavioral data into conversions.

According to him, the focus is now all about a dynamic experience for prospects and clients. What ON24 has found is that instead of having a whole suite of live global events and roadshows around the world, they’ve optimized their virtual experiences through successfully tailored, engaging webinars. From live Q&A sessions to virtual talk shows and niche content, webinars are multimedia experiences that get audiences involved in the conversation. What they’re looking for are signals versus insights that speak to engagement metrics. Data plus intelligence equals engagement.That methodology achieves pipeline revenue in the most efficient, cost-effective way for ON24.

In a room full of (mostly) marketers, discussions made it clear that aligned sales and marketing teams make for powerful results. Both have a responsibility to engage prospects and clients and to do so intelligently in a data-driven fashion. As one marketer put it, “sales can’t just be the only one taking credit anymore. Even if they nurture them, marketing is just as much a driver in the process and responsible in the multi-attribution chain.” We couldn’t agree more.

Are you attending an event in your area and want to meet? Let us know.