Sharpen your pencils and dig out your backpack, because it’s time to prep for back-to-school. Last year, e-commerce alone drew $58.1 billion in back-to-school sales: this year, make sure your clients get the gold stars they deserve with advertising solutions that deliver results.

If you’re looking to increase consumer consideration…

…opt for longer form content that lets you dig deeper into your brand’s use case. Parents with young children, college students, soccer moms and young parents are all desirable audiences that start buying back-to-school products in late summer. Utilize tactics like Native Article, which matches branded content to the look and feel of premium publishers and is consumed on site, to educate consumers on your client’s products and services via a format proven to stimulate 3x greater purchase consideration (than when consumed off-site; Forbes Study).

For the best results, avoid long, vague headlines that are complex or misleading: instead, focus on creating a few short, unbranded back-to-school specific headlines that are relevant to your content. Examples include:

• Calling All Moms: Should Your Child Get a Flu Shot?
• 7 Little Known Tricks to Save on School Supplies
• What's the Best Laptop For Back to School?
• Essential Time-Saving Hacks For the Busy Parent

For back-to-school season in particular, shorter, snackable content formats tend to perform the best. Look to listicles, slideshows, infographics and video formats to grab your consumer's attention, reserving editorials for more in-depth information. Pairing your content with a distribution strategy that includes social influencers can also boost results.

If you’re looking to drive sales…

…employ a robust retargeting strategy to increase in-store conversions. While there are many avenues for reaching active back-to-school shoppers, nothing tends to drive action as efficiently as Native Display. Designed to guide qualified audiences to your site from premium publisher news sources, Native Display achieves 8x greater CTR than traditional display (Nativo Platform). For an even stronger impact, try pairing Native Article with Native Display Retargeting to watch your client’s in-store consumer conversions get straight A’s.

If you’re looking to boost brand awareness…

…focus on promoting products and services in a highly engaging, visual format around topics back-to-school shoppers are already searching for, including:

• back to school shopping & fashion trends
• child safety, health, nutrition and wellness tips
• saving/budgeting and time-saving information
• study tips
• making their child stand out

Using an engaging, eye-catching format like Native Video can provide your client with 50% higher lift than when compared to standard pre-roll (MediaPost). Placed naturally within a publisher’s feed, Native Video reaches consumers where they’re naturally reading about the back-to-school products they need, making your content stand out in the crowd.

No matter your goal, mapping your content marketing to real business outcomes is critical to success. Contact a Nativo representative today to begin your back-to-school campaign with a free brand study that can help you measure impact across the customer journey, including:

• Did my content generate brand lift?
• Was my content engaging?
• Did my content influence opinions?
• Did my content drive sales?