Growth Hacking Taboola - Lessons From Honey

Greetings and thanks for reading The Real World Marketer. Today, we'll uncover the growth hacking tricks Honey used to saturate Taboola and other native channels.

As a quick refresher, here’s what we covered so far in this series.

• Part 1: Genesis of Piggy

• Part 2: Product-Market Fit and its Influence in Shaping Piggy

• Part 3: Secrets Behind Honey & Piggy's Initial Growth

• Part 4: How Honey Growth Hacked Native Channels like Taboola.

Stay tuned for How Piggy Used Email To Growth Hack! Please show your appreciation by smashing that like button and sharing this post. If you are new to me, make sure you're subscribed for the next release. 👇

I especially love this story because to this day, CapitalOneShopping, Karma, Coupert and others are still using the funnel that the growth hackers at Honey built. If you haven’t seen their ads by now, you may need to check to see if you are living under a rock.

When Honey and everyone else in the industry was forced to stop using Chrome’s logo in their marketing pieces. They took a step back and focused heavily on finding another experience that would work. Taboola and other native channels had a large amount of desktop traffic. At the time when they created this funnel, you could target desktop users on the native platforms, but you couldn’t exclusively target chrome desktop users (generally the users that shopped the most online).

You would have to have had a rep at Taboola build you campaigns in the backend that would allow you to exclusively target the browser chrome browser. Despite this, it meant that if you could unlock the creative, landing page and strategy. You’d have yourself a gold mine of potential.

How Honey Growth Hacked Ad Creatives On Taboola

The first step in your marketing funnel is always the ad creative. No matter the platform, the ad creative is always the attention getting part of the funnel. It must be your best and most engaging marketing message.

Did you know that the human attention span is now less than 8 seconds in 2023? Since 2000, the human attention span has dropped over 4 seconds from the average of 12.

Congratulations, fellow humans! Our attention spans are now shorter than a goldfish's, which clocks in at 9 seconds

Honey knew that growth hacking someone with the attention span shorter than a goldfish would be challenging. Not only would they be fighting for your attention, they’d also be fighting banner blindness.

What is banner blindness?

Banner blindness is a very real and unfortunate thing for marketers. It’s where users on the web have become so accustomed to seeing ads that they often tune them out completely. This is because they've learned to associate banners with advertising, which they typically don't want to see.

So how can you make sure your banner ads don't get ignored?

Here are a few tips:

• Make your banners stand out. Use bright colors, large fonts, or eye-catching visuals to grab attention.

• Make your banners so outrageous, your eye’s can’t help but tell your brain to stop and go. WTF is that?!?

• Last but not least, keep your banners relevant to the content on the page will make the users more likely to click them.

So how did honey do it?

Honey came up with another ingenious way to use another company’s branding and goodwill to catapult their product in front of everyone's eyes. They targeted Amazon.

They used ad headlines like:

• This Amazon Hack With Save You Money

• How To Hack Amazon

• Amazon Shoppers Need To See This

• How Shoppers Are Hacking Amazon

• Amazon Prime Members Will Want To See This

• Attention Amazon Prime Members - This Saves You Money

Then they’d throw in a few Images with Amazon Packaging and walla, success.

Why Honey Chose Taboola

Taboola is a native advertising platform that helps businesses reach their target audience through relevant content. Native ads are designed to blend in with the surrounding content, making them less intrusive and more likely to be clicked on. Since taboola has such a large amount of traffic and with targeting capabilities, it meant that the traffic could be highly profitable for honey.

Why Amazon was the perfect ad creative for Taboola

Amazon is always on every shoppers mind online. In fact every single day Amazon dominates e-commerce in the US with a whopping 37.8% lead over everyone else. Considering Amazon was and still is making headlines almost every day. Using a content platform to pitch an Amazon shopping hack. #brilliant

How You Can Growth Hack Taboola Too?

Taboola is a relatively easy platform to get started on. However, I should caution small businesses here. You will need a much larger budget than you would Google Ads per say. Taboola’s traffic in most cases is not geared towards a specific searcher's intent. For small businesses, many of your customers are going to be local and as a result, Google will be your best source for leads.

In any case, here are some tips on how to growth hack Taboola for your business:

• Understand your audience's pain points. What are the problems or challenges that your target audience is facing? Once you understand their pain points, you can create content or ads that offer solutions. Honey tapped into the universal desire to save money while shopping on a giant platform like Amazon. Think about what universally compelling needs your product or service addresses and tailor your message around that.

• A/B test everything. Don't be afraid to experiment with different headlines, images, and descriptions to see what works best. The best way to find what works is to test different variations of your ads and see what gets the best results.

• Leverage user behavior data. Taboola offers valuable insights into how users interact with your ads. Use this data to optimize your campaigns and make sure that your ads are being seen by the right people.

• Create valuable content. Content is still king. When you provide valuable content that educates, entertains, or solves a problem, you're more likely to build trust with your audience. This can lead to higher engagement rates and, in the long run, more conversions.

• Emulate, don't copy. It's okay to take inspiration from successful campaigns, but outright copying can damage your brand's reputation. Instead, analyze what made a particular campaign successful and adapt those strategies to fit your unique brand voice and target audience.

• Play with emotions. Ads that evoke strong emotions, whether positive or negative, tend to get more engagement. Honey played on the excitement of getting a good deal and the fear of missing out on savings. Consider what emotions your product or service can tap into and craft your messaging accordingly.

• Utilize retargeting. Sometimes, users need a few nudges before they take action. With retargeting, you can re-engage users who've interacted with your content or visited your website. This can be particularly useful to remind them of the value you offer.

Here are some additional tips to help you optimize your Taboola campaigns:

• Use clear and concise calls to action. Tell users what you want them to do, whether it's to learn more, sign up for a free trial, or make a purchase.

• Use high-quality images and videos. Visual content is more likely to be engaging and attention-grabbing.

• Target your ads to the right audience. Use Taboola's targeting options to reach people who are interested in your product or service.

• Track your results and make adjustments as needed. Use Taboola's analytics to see how your campaigns are performing and make changes as needed to improve your results.

By following these tips, honey’s story and my advice on A|B testing. Perhaps you too can use Taboola to growth hack your business.

The Power of Growth Hacking

In the dynamic world of growth hacking, success hinges on agility, creativity, and a keen understanding of the audience's pulse. As Honey's journey with Taboola demonstrates, gold mines can be discovered with the right strategies.

Honey didn't just use Taboola as a typical native advertising platform. They went beyond the traditional approach and created engaging and relevant content that resonated with not only theirs, but Amazon’s audience as well. They also used targeting and data to optimize their campaigns and make sure that they were reaching the right people.

In summary the lessons we can learn from Honey's success are:

• Be creative and innovative. Don't be afraid to think outside the box and try new things.

• Understand your audience. What are their pain points? What are they interested in?

• Leverage existing audiences. If you can reasonably use the goodwill and branding of another while you are trying to establish your own. It will significantly lower the cost.

If you can do these things, you'll be well on your way to growth hacking success.

Tune in next time for part 5 of this series, where I break down how Piggy growth hacked an email marketing channel. .