Two years ago, when my book was published, I was fortunate to get flattering reviews from several distinguished sites such as Communication Arts, Lurzer’s Archive and Agency Spy (They even included a link to my book’s Amazon page!). Naturally, I shared the news on my social network channels: Blog, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.
However, pretty soon I was asking myself – “What’s next?”
The following morning, while going through my daily reading list, I stumbled upon one of Outbrain’s content recommendations at the bottom of one of the stories. It was a perfect match – another interesting story that felt as if it was written specifically for me. At that time I didn’t know much about Outbrain. I mean, I “knew” the name, I was using their recommendations on a daily basis but I didn’t REALLY understand the nuts and bolts of how it works.
I thought it would be nice if more people could easily read the reviews about my book, but not in the form of a quote in an ad. I wanted readers to stumble upon these reviews naturally, the same way that I did. Agency spy’s review was a good piece of content about the book, not written by me, and therefore, the best recommendation to use. I thought it could bring a meaningful energy boost to my marketing efforts.
I called my friend Asaf Hochman, who works at Outbrain, and I invited him to meet me for coffee. The next day we met at a BREADS, a beautiful local bakery, and shared an amazing Babka while Asaf gave me helpful tips on how to use their platform in order to reach my target audience.
The next day, together with Tamar Heilweil who works for me, we started to play around with the platform and slowly began to shape the campaign by choosing the audience we want to reach with our story.
During the final stage of uploading, we were asked to submit images and headlines.
Different headlines.
“Why different headlines?” I asked Tamar.
“I know exactly which headline I want…”
But the platform suggested (insisted?!) having few options and see which one works best.
“Funny” – I said – “The platform is competing with my own experience…,” I had to convince myself that it’s a good thing.
And then we clicked the “launch” button and the campaign went live.
Overall, we got some really good exposure on some of the world’s leading online publications. As it turns out, my first choice of copy was among the top three headlines (Thank God I can still count on my instincts…) We discovered a smart platform that enabled us to effortlessly share content with people.
The campaign didn’t break the Internet. My Amazon page didn’t crash down, but we had great exposure and good results.
“One day” – I said to myself – “I will work with these guys.”
Photo: Our ad for outbrain – Ad Age, November 2015
Volkswagen Jetta 1.4 TSI. Equipped with all possible letters: Multimedia System with BT headset including a built-in 6.3” color touch screen, USB connection, voice command for sending / receiving SMS, JPEG image viewer, Hill Hold system for preventing deterioration, and CHLH lighting park assist. As well as, Keyless ignition, Cruise Control system, Alloy wheels, Blue Motion technology, and Start / Stop function for significant fuel savings.
Two weeks ago we launched Outbrain’s You Are What You Recommend campaign with an ad on the front page of The New York Times and this week we continue our campaign in Advertising Age. As part of Advertising Age’s annual Content Marketing Issue you can find Outbrain’s ad in addition to Outbrain’s A-Z Guide to Brand Publishing – a collection of recommendations that celebrate how great marketers have adopted content as their primary means of communication with people online.
Here’s a link to download a free copy of the guide:
Enjoy!
You Are What You Recommend
We launched our new global campaign for Outbrain on the front page of the New York Times. Recommended by Outbrain: The New York Times front page
(Full text) “You Are What You Recommend. Five simple words of personal expression. It’s what we do. You may recognize us from the Internet by the label above. Outbrain recommends content more than six billion times a day. Content from the publishers, brands, and people you find most interesting and relevant to you. Today’s recommendation is the content you hold in your hands. To discover more, visit us at www.outbrain.com”.
Agency: No, No, No, No, No, Yes
Chief Creative Officer: Gideon Amichay, Creative team: Roni Schneider, Gil Aviyam, Yiftach Chozev, Strategy: Yoni Lahav, Account Supervisor: Shahar Ferber, Daphna Tsror, Tamar Heilweil; Designers: Liat Lapushin, Gali Namdar
Outbrain: Yaron Galai, Founder & CEO; Lisa LaCour, VP, Head of Global Marketing; Rich Ullman, VP Marketing
Chief Creative Officer: Gideon Amichay, Creative: Roni Schneider, Gil Aviyam, Account Supervisor: Daphna Tsror, Designers: Liat Lapushin, Gali Namdar
Postproduction House: Gravity, Supervisor: Ilan Buni, Head of online: Yoav Sbarigo, Online: Alex Doitch, Production manger: Gili Rolnitzi, postproduction: Lilach Pingerman, Hadas Fogel, Sound: Soundhouse, Sound design: Paulo Grupi, Yael Haim
Outbrain is world’s largest content recommendation platform whose content marketing module offers to help Internet publishers increase web traffic by presenting them with relevant website links. When it comes to content marketing strategies, you need to make sure you have everything in place in order to run successful campaigns. You don’t want to put out content just to meet a quota, it is best to create campaigns that can withstand the test of time and will provide traffic to your page for a long time to come. If you are creating content for your social media channels, you may want to consider using something like Growthoid to grow your audience which in turn will get your content noticed. A content marketing strategy is a good way to achieve this as you can forward plan all content that you create to ensure consistent output. In turn, this can help to optimize your SEO, which is valuable, particularly if you are a business. The better your SEO, the higher you will place on rankings on search engines. As users browsing the web don’t tend to make it past the first couple of pages, your ranking can be the difference between making a sale or not. You can also make use of networking sites like LinkedIn to generate leads to your business, although it can be difficult to stand out on the site, especially if you are in a competitive niche. This is where services like those provided at UseViral come in, as they are able to grow your connections, making you more visible and potentially giving you the social proof that people may look for before asking to connect with you. The more connections you have, the better chance you have of being able to get those leads and turn them into visits to your website.
If your website is based solely on blogging and that is what you want people to note you for, you can see video on how to go about that step by step, building up traffic along the way and helping your SEO thrive whilst moving up in the SERP. There is always additional help out there for those who are just starting out and need a boost to get on that online ladder.
Agency: No, No, No, No, No, Yes
Chief Creative Officer: Gideon Amichay, Account Supervisor: Tamar Heilweil, Shahar Ferber, Daphna Tsror,Strategy: Yoni Lahav, Designers: Liat Lapushin, Gali Namdar
Client: Outbrain Vice President, Global Marketing: Lisa LaCour, VP, Marketing:Rich Ullman
