The content has a much longer tail than a Facebook or Google ad, says the retailer's marketing director. For example, a video that posted to YouTube in February continues to generate conversions nearly every day.

Roughly 40% of Tiege Hanley’s marketing budget is allocated to paying influencers to produce videos they post on YouTube and, to a small extent, images on Instagram, says Akin Tosyali, the retailer’s director of digital marketing.

The reason the retailer devotes such a large share of its budget to influencers is simple: The ad format works for a much longer period of time than a Facebook or Google ad, says Tosyali, For example, a video by Jose Zuniga, one of the founders of the men’s lifestyle brand Teaching Men’s Fashion, that posted to YouTube in February continues to generate conversions nearly every day, he says, referring to sales that use the unique code that appear below the video.

But finding the right influencers is difficult, even for a retailer like Tiege Hanley that works with an agency to source prospective influencers, Tosyali says. “It’s just like any other platform, there’s a lot of trial and error,” he says. “We’re have to kiss a lot of frogs to see which turn into a prince.”

Beyond influencer marketing, the retailer also invests heavily in ads that appear on Facebook, Instagram and across the mobile web via Audience Network, Facebook mobile ad network. Roughly half of those ads are aimed at customer acquisition, while the other half are remarketing to consumers who have visited Tiege.com but have not made a purchase.

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Its retargeting messages come in a number of different forms, based on what a consumer did when he visited the retailer’s site, Tosyali says. That’s because the message that will resonate with a consumer who visited a product detail page is different from one who watched a video on its homepage but didn’t click further into the site.

The retailer plans to ramp up its spending on Facebook—and Instagram, in particular—next year, with some of that spending coming at the expense of its Google spending. The retailer plans to double its spending on Instagram, which has an audience in line with its 18- to 25-year-olds. While 25 million businesses use the platform, only 2 million advertise on it, which is one-third the number of advertisers on Facebook.

“Everyone is on Google and everyone is Facebook, but everyone isn’t on Instagram,” Tosyali says. “It’s less competitive, which helps us stand out.”

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