Using Outbrain to promote your business
- Read time: 3 mins
- Tech level: low
- Key point: Outbrain drives traffic to your website using your web content/articles on other sites.
Publishing your articles or advertorials to magazines used to be a great way of promoting your company, business or service. However, today there are large amounts of content relevant to any niche topic available online. While print sales are continuing to decrease every year, the consumption of internet content is continuing to increase. Online content however, requires the user to seek out what interests them in a sort of treasure hunt for information and that simple “flick” of a page to get to the next article isn’t usually possible. Or is it? Outbrain is a service that makes it possible.
What is Outbrain?
Outbrain recommends content that interests readers to emulate that easy “flick” of a page and eases the transition between interesting content for readers.
Outbrain recommends similar content to readers depending on:
- browsing behaviour and;
- the content of the article being read.
Through this, Outbrain is able to drive traffic to your website. How? By recommending similar articles to readers via a large variety of well-known publisher websites and direct them to your site to continue reading. These readers that are driven to your site will be of high quality because their engagement, in whatever it was being recommended, will be at the same level of interest.
What are the main benefits of Outbrain for you?
- The ability to drive traffic to your website, article or blog. As there are negative connotations relating to online advertising - and more specifically banner ads - Outbrain's recommendations don’t exactly resemble ads. Despite not differing too much from actual advertising, Outbrain's recommendations give the reader the impressions that they are in complete control of what they're reading. A potential consumer might stumble upon your website and browse a little, but not be overly interested in the content. However, when recommended an article via Outbrain, the decision to click through and follow up seems more organic and less forced.
- Gain exposure from a wide variety of publisher sites. By using Outbrain, your content will be exposed and recommended via articles across a wide variety of well-known publishers and websites, depending on your content and its relevance to your ideal consumer.
- Enhance content quality. Outbrain pre-filters “spammy” links or deceiving headlines in an effort to create a positive relationship with readers. The effect of this is that only links that are of high quality and interest to readers are given recommendations which will make readers more likely to click on them.
Outbrain management services and costs
The payment model for Outbrain is through cost per click (CPC) in which there is a set daily budget and content will continue to be recommended until the budget is drained. This means that you're only paying for the readers that actually click through to your content, not impressions or views (although both are still measured). Through these insights, the effectiveness of each recommendation is demonstrated. A high click through rate is obviously preferable to a low one.
Nonetheless, success only comes with effective management. While you could easily manage Outbrain yourself, you could equally hand the job over to an experienced professional and focus on your own priorities. A professional with up-to-date knowledge, can optimise your campaign and achieve maximum return on investment by effectively targeting your ideal consumer. Without the help of an experienced professional:
- your content may not get as much exposure
- you may not be reaching your specific target audience
- or you may end up spending more than you need to.
Overall, Outbrain is a new and effective way to generate leads and to drive traffic to your website. Your articles and content can be recommended to engaged readers who will have an interest in whatever it is that you offer. Since their ‘introduction’ to your company is via a reputable source, their first impression of your business, products, or services will be far better than being introduced by, say, a banner ad.
