How Can You Justify Testing New Platforms?

Between TikTok, BeReal, Reddit, Twitter, there’s bound to be at least one platform you’ve been curious about testing out… Do you know how to determine if it actually makes sense for your brand, though? Understanding your audience, the platform setting, and creative needs are all part of determining if testing a new platform is right for you.

Four of Bamboo’s Growth Experts share their tips below on how you can justify testing new platforms.

Francis Molettieri, Sr. Growth Marketing Manager, Search

“The biggest consideration for testing on new platforms for clients is matching the vertical/product to the correct audiences. Matching to the right audience starts the test on the right footing allowing for positive performance & giving the advertising platforms the best signals to learn. For example, matching younger audiences to TikTok, Snapchat & YouTube; B2B audiences to LinkedIn or Bing; lastly, the broad/catch all audience to Google & Meta.”

Jessica LeBaron, Growth Marketing Manager, Search

“Look into creative asset best practices and have multiple rounds of assets ready when launching in order to start off strong and avoid ad fatigue. Diversify your creative assets to find what works best with new audiences.”

Briana Stone, Growth Marketing Manager

“New platforms offer the potential to reach a new audience that you may not be able to reach with your current platforms due to user behavior/demographics of the platform. Also, new platforms offer an opportunity to connect with your audience in a different setting. For example, users on Instagram may be scrolling through posts & videos just to kill the time, while users on YouTube may be actively researching how to do something and potentially be more engaged.”

Ariana Munroe, Growth Marketing Manager, Social

“Before pitching a new platform to a client the absolute first thing I consider is its users. For each client, we have a certain target audience that we know to be our bread and butter, so if that demographic is not regularly found on the new advertising platform, it’s generally not worth a flight. The next thing I consider is the competitiveness of the landscape - how do CPMs and CPCs of the industry typically look? For newer platforms, such as TikTok, costs are lower because the platform is less saturated with advertisers so, in the case of newer platforms, I like to test them at least once! Lastly, creative needs. It’s important to make sure the type of creative to fit the new platform for a flight won’t be too much of a lift to design. If creative from a different platform can be repurposed and tweaked slightly, even better.”

The bottom line: Does your target audience align with the users on the platform? Do you have creative that makes sense for the platform, or capacity to develop new assets to run? Understanding best practices and the bandwidth you have available can greatly help you determine if you should (and how to) launch on a new platform. If you’re in the market to bring on a growth partner to help with channel diversification and campaign optimization, reach out to our team.