Does anybody have experience paying for advertising on Instagram? I’m not opposed to paying for ads; Facebook does spend billions of dollars keeping Instagram running. But I’d rather not throw a thousand dollars at Instagram if nobody who sees the ads buys type.
0
Comments
So if Instagram is dying, what's the next big thing I should be chasing? I don't really need to be where the cool kids are, because they generally don't have two bits to rub together
First, we're not selling sneakers. And, at least for me, our actual customers are large businesses that make decisions slowly. So, conversions are essentially untraceable.
I generally think that the value of any marketing we do is to remind people we exist, to reassure people that we are stable and will maintain our software, to accumulate good will, and to have enough of a brand presence that we have a clear stake to our products if we have to go up against a pirate or license violator.
That last one deserves a little unpacking. I've helped a bunch of people with license violations and I'm always shocked by how much more trouble they have getting big companies to return their emails and to negotiate. I eventually realised it's because it's hard to tell that they actually are the creator of the given font. Darden Studio, in large part because our library is small but not exclusively, has never had that problem. As I grow our library and publish fonts by people other than Josh it's important to keep up the presence. I've also been told by lawyers that showing you have made a marketing investment in your brand and your trademarks can be important if you ever have to go to court.
I agree that Tiktok is for the cool kids but I think that it's a mistake to blow off cool kids because they don't have money right now. I do think that cool kids can have influence over font branding choices (though indirectly) and, of course, some of them will be important design directors in five years. I'd be on Tiktok myself if I thought we had any cool kid appeal, but we just don't. That's a decision for each foundry to make based on its customer base.
Hence my current interest in Linkedin. It's an experiment and I don't know if it will work. Linkedin now makes it very hard to grow a following quickly and I'm behind (having only just started the business page this week). If you have a linkedin account and feel like doing me a sold please follow the studio.
That was when i started to take it more seriously because I wanted to look proffessional. Though, I remember at the time that when people noticed my activity they would ask if I was job hunting. In the last couple years I've seen more use of it by people who are trying to be thought leaders in their own industry, posting articles or faqs or whatever.
But yeah, I think it's starting to pivot to being more traditional social media, but still work focused. That makes a lot of sense to me in a pandemic era.
The idea of using it to promote Darden Studio started as a joke. I was talking to James Edmondson about how our clients are businesses and not the cool kids and he literally said "you should be on linkedin". He was just taking the piss, but over time Quinn and I started to think it might actually be possible to do it in a fun way. I've been slowed down by fonts not being a product category, but we shall see.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/type-network/posts/
On IG I have 2,905 followers after 71 posts. TN have 3,763 followers after 729 posts. The excellent Sharp Type Co have 24.8k followers after 401 posts.
What do these numbers really mean? I don't know Joyce.
So far I've barely posted. All I'm doing is one to one outreach. Using my own mailing list to send invitations to follow, which is the obvious first step
As a user/buyer of type I often get inspiration from IG, but I try to disregard the ads even if FB tries to disguise them as much as possible. I have made a few purchases of fonts that were directly influenced by IG but I’m pretty sure those were regular posts rather than ads. And, mostly, motivated by compelling images of well designed materials using the typefaces.
With all this, combined with the general aversion to the parent company, I would advise to treat IG as a way to showcase your work/company rather than to drive sales -- if you are inclined to buy ads, treat them as a way to increase your presence rather than to pitch product.
There was a time in 2008-2010, just after the recession started, when a lot of big businesses stepped away from pay-per-click advertising. Google AdWords became dirt cheap, and there were few restrictions. I made a bunch of display ads and proceeded to drown my website in traffic. It was glorious. I paid somewhere around 40,000/year to Google, but it was well worth it. Alas, that golden age didn't last long. Online advertising in general got out of hand. Soon the backlash started, adblockers came on the scene, and everything went south. Google started pushing targeted advertising, which narrowed my audience and placement choices extremely.
As a result I had to fine-tune my campaigns until they were only shown to people who already had my fonts. Sales dropped precipitously, costs rose to unsustainable levels.
I've pretty much abandoned AdWords altogether. It's unfortunate, but I see how it came to be this way. Few things irritate me more than online ads
So now I'm trying to establish category authority and brand awareness through social media. It's a lot more effort, and the results are not anywhere near as fantastic as AdWords used to be, but eh, it's getting the job done.