How to reduce the cost of online advertising with AI tools?
Online advertising has become an integral part of marketing strategies for B2C companies. As the online advertising market continues to grow, more and more companies are using various channels such as Facebook, Instagram and Google to reach their end customers. In this article, we will compare them in terms of price and effectiveness, as well as examine the ratio of investment to ROI. In the last part of the article, we will also learn how to optimise the cost of online campaigns using AI tools and voicebots.
Comparison of advertising platforms: Facebook, Instagram and Google
B2C companies, i.e. those operating in the consumer market, often use three main advertising channels - Facebook, Instagram and Google. Each of these channels has its own unique features and advantages.
Facebook is the social media platform with the largest number of users in the world (2.9 billion). In October 2021, the parent company of the three platforms, Facebook Inc. changed its name to Meta. Although the company's market value dropped from $1 trillion in September 2021 to $300 billion after the name change to Meta, Facebook remains the most popular platform. There are 1.98 billion daily active Facebook users.
What is FB's advertising potential? 62% of people say their interest in a product increased after seeing it in a Facebook video. Consumers are 53% more likely to buy from a brand easily accessible through Facebook Messenger (Websiterating). With precise targeting tools, Facebook ads can be tailored to specific audiences, allowing companies to reach their target customer base. Facebook offers various ad formats, such as images, videos, and internal ads in Messenger messages. It is also a popular advertising channel for e-commerce businesses, which can take advantage of features such as Facebook stores.
Instagram has more than 1.28 billion monthly active users, making it one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. What's more, there are more than 500 million daily active users on Instagram. This huge number of users makes Instagram the seventh most visited website worldwide. In addition, images posted on Instagram have 23% more engagement than those posted on Facebook. As many as 80 percent of Instagram users say they have purchased a product they saw on the app (Websiterating).
Instagram offers many targeting options, such as age, gender, location, interests or user behavior. This allows you to reach your target audience. Instagram is distinguished by high interaction - it is a platform based on a visual form of communication, which promotes high user interaction with advertising content. A variety of ad formats - Instagram offers a variety of ad formats, such as images, videos, carousels or ads in stories, allowing you to be more creative and tailor your ads to your campaign goals. Instagram is part of the Facebook group, which means that ads on this platform can be easily combined with Facebook ad campaigns, allowing for even better results and greater control over campaign budgets.
Google Ads
Advertising on Google (Google Ads) is one of the most popular forms of online advertising. With Google Ads, businesses can display ads on Google search results and on other websites within Google's affiliate program. Google Ads offers advanced targeting options such as keywords, location, target groups, interests and more. It is an effective advertising channel for B2C companies to reach potential customers when they search for products or services online.
Formats and cost of advertising on the Internet
Pricing for online advertising are increasing year after year. Last year, ad costs rose 108% on Google, 92% on TikTok, and 89% on Facebook (Hunch). If you're wondering how much it costs to advertise online and which will pay you the most, keep in mind that each channel is governed by its own rules. The prices of advertising campaigns in internet depend on many factors, such as competition, type of advertising, targeting, campaign duration and budget. Let's now take a look at the costs on each platform:
Facebook ad prices
Facebook ad prices are a variable value, depending on many factors, such as the type of ad, target audience, competition, ad quality and more. On Facebook, we can choose different payment models, such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-view (CPM) or cost-per-action (CPA). The price of advertising on Facebook can be relatively low compared to other advertising channels, making it an attractive choice for many B2C companies. In 2022, the average cost of an ad click was $0.97, and 1,000 impressions cost $7.19 (Interaktywnie.com).
Advertising prices on Instagram
On Instagram, we also have a choice of different types of billing, such as CPC (you only pay when someone clicks on your ad), CPM (you pay for every thousand impressions of your ad) and CPV (you pay for every view of your video that lasts at least three seconds). In 2022, the average cost per ad click was $3.56, and 1,000 impressions cost $7.91 (Interaktywnie.com).
Ad prices on Google
Google Ads tend to be more expensive, especially if competition in a given market is high. However, due to the nature of how Google Ads work, i.e. displaying ads in search results based on keywords, it can lead to high conversions, as ads are displayed to users when they are actively searching for information on a particular topic. According to the Visible agency, if you pay for 1,000 impressions you should expect to pay at least a few zlotys (e.g. 8 or 10). If you decide to pay CPV, you can reduce your expenses as much as possible - even to 3-5 pennies. Interestingly, about 50% of internet users do not notice the difference between paid and free search results (Websiterating).
How to optimise the cost of online campaigns with AI tools?
Artificial intelligence tools can help companies optimize online advertising costs, primarily through intelligent automation. On the market, you will find many platforms and tools that help create, manage and monitor advertising campaigns on multiple platforms simultaneously.
Starting with the ad creation process itself, AI tools can reduce the costliness of ads with ready-made templates and automatic layout and content suggestions. Simple visual editors make it easy to test every site feature, navigation bar, button, etc. This allows you to create more customized and useful landing pages or ad designs. Such solutions often also offer the ability to conduct A/B testing of campaigns.
AI tools also help reduce the cost of online advertising by improving targeting, automating activities and handling leads. AI-based targeting allows the creation of precise segments based on user behavior. Such tools also provide automatic optimization of advertising rates and optimal allocation of budgets between channels. III. Automation of handling multiple campaigns simultaneously, better cost control.
Conversational AI in marketing
A particularly interesting type of tools are those that use conversational AI. Conversational AI is a type of artificial intelligence that enables human-machine interaction through natural language. In marketing, conversational AI is used with a subset of chatbots and voicebots, or virtual assistants, to automate communication with customers, including answering questions, assisting with purchases or remarketing. With them, companies can increase conversions and optimize the costs of online campaigns, as well as improve the user experience.
Particularly attractive and effective tools are voicebots, or voice bots, which recognize and interpret commands spoken by the user and then respond to them. Voicebots can be used in many fields, including marketing, where they enable easier and more effective communication with customers through voice channels such as cell phones, smart speakers or devices with navigation systems. Examples of popular voicebots include Siri from Apple, Google Assistant from Google and Alexa from Amazon. However, these are mainly entertainment voicebots, but they are finding uses in business, too, as they can execute specific scenarios for marketing campaigns, increasing user engagement and providing an antidote to rising online ad prices.
AI-Voicebots in Marketing: Foxford case study
An example of cost savings and efficiency in the use of voicebots can be found at Foxford, a company running a language platform. By using Apifonica's voicebot, the company successfully processed 7866 leads acquired through a Facebook campaign. The voicebot contacted within a minute after submitting the form and pre-qualified the user for the group (asking about the level of proficiency and preferred dates, among other things). Voicebot asked the question, "How long have you been learning English?" There are many ways to answer such a question ("3 years", "never", "well, I used to have classes at school"). Voicebot can recognize most of these statements by keywords and assign them to a specific category defined in the scenario (beginner course, intermediate course, etc.). It is this ability to understand even colloquial speech and respond in an appropriate manner that makes the interaction with the bot natural and similar to a conversation with another human being.
It took Foxford employees an average of 7 minutes to process one contact. Apifonica's Voicebot processed 7866 leads, successfully reaching 68% of contacts and qualifying 64% of them. By automatically filtering out 2,500 junk leads, the voice assistant saved as much as 291 hours (2,500 x 7 minutes) of salespeople's work. Taking into account the fact that salespeople earn an average gross salary of PLN 13800 (data according to the 11th edition of Antal's salary report), or PLN 82,14 per hour, and the time saved on each lead is 7 minutes, by using voicebot, Foxford saved PLN 23,919 (which is EUR 5106).
With Apifonica's voicebot responding to customer inquiries within 2 minutes, working 24/7 and being able to process 10,000 calls simultaneously, the campaign has increased its effectivity. It also relieves the sales and marketing department of monotonous tasks, allowing employees to perform more complex tasks.
As you can see from this example, the use of artificial intelligence tools and voicebots in marketing campaigns saves time and costs, and increases the effectiveness of campaigns. From the stage of creating campaigns, through their configuration, handling leads, and optimising budget utilisation, to monitoring and reporting, AI tools allow you to increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. By enhancing message appeal, improving targeting accuracy, optimising ad costs and improving UX, AI tools bring a new quality to marketing and sales, allowing companies to meet high customer demands and stay ahead of the competition.
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