5 Ways to Ensure You're Strategizing for Online Advertising Success
Read the story about an ice cream shop that invested heavily in digital advertising and saw a meager return on its investment. The company’s CMO, who had little experience with digital marketing, was very disappointed. He admitted to us that he was completely unprepared for how challenging it would be to measure ROI on online ads.
Readers of our blog know that we love ice cream. It’s one of our favorite topics to blog about because we love the taste, smell and feel of it so much. In almost any market, there are also challenges – especially if your business is new and you don’t have a lot of capital to invest in initial start-up costs. As much as we love ice cream and want everyone who reads this blog to enjoy it as much as we do, we also like helping businesses succeed.
That’s why today we are going to share 5 ways you can ensure your strategy for online advertising success – no matter what business you operate or what market you serve.
Have a clear goal for why you’re investing in digital advertising
The very first step in ensuring your online advertising success is having a clear goal for why you’re investing in digital ads in the first place. What do you want your ads to do? What results do you want them to generate? What is the end game?
There are many goals that can be achieved through digital advertising. Some of them include:
- Generating more leads and/or sales - Ideally, you want your ads to drive enough traffic to your site that you can convert more of those people into leads or sales.
- Generating brand awareness - If you’re new to the market and have a very small budget for digital advertising, you may want to use your ads to build awareness for your brand.
- Generating clicks to your website’s conversion pages - This is one of the most common goals for digital ads.
Your ads will usually direct people to a specific place on your website, such as a product page or sign-up page. If people click on your ad and then don’t take any action, you will not be able to track their visit to your website or see a conversion.
Assign someone to be your ROI-measurement guardian angel
Depending on your experience with digital advertising and industry knowledge, you may want to assign someone to be your guardian angel.
This person’s job is to make sure that your ad spend is generating ROI.
How? - They will help you set a clear goal for your ad spend.
- They will make sure that you are tracking your ad spend and monitoring your return on investment.
- They will work with you to make your ads as effective as possible. - They will help you learn from your mistakes.
- They will also help you celebrate your successes.
- They will help you understand what it takes to measure the ROI on different types of digital ads. - They will help you decide when it’s time to stop running a particular ad.
- They will help you reset your ad spend when appropriate. - They will help you determine if it’s time to change your advertising strategy.
Commit to measuring ad engagement and ad ROI separately
Marketers typically measure engagement with their ad campaigns in terms of impressions, reach and other non-revenue-focused metrics. Many also measure conversion rates as a way to measure ad ROI.
However, engagement and ROI can be two very different numbers. What’s more, they can change frequently and without notice – depending on the market you’re serving and any other external factors. Therefore, it’s important that you commit to measuring ad engagement and ROI separately.
If your impressions, clicks and other engagement metrics are on the rise but your conversion rates aren’t increasing, you’re not going to be able to accurately measure your ad ROI. This is why you should make a point of measuring both engagement and ad ROI.
Highlight your most important conversion action in your ad copy
Your ads are marketing messages. You can use them to attract potential customers to your brand and products. However, if you want your ads to be successful, you need to make sure that you’re highlighting the most important conversion action on your website.
What’s one of the most important conversion actions on your website? What’s the one thing that people must do on your website after clicking on your ad? Your ad copy should highlight that conversion action.
Find out which words customers are using to search for your product or service. Then, use those words in your ad copy. For example, if you sell food trucks, you may want to use the words “food trucks for sale” in your ad copy.
Combine paid ads with free ads that build brand awareness
You may want to consider not only running paid ads, but also investing in free ads that build your brand awareness.
This could include:
- Sponsoring blog posts.
- Offering guest blog posts.
- Making media buys.
- Creating infographics and/or videos.
- Engaging in podcast advertising.
- Investing in influencer marketing.
- Investing in retargeting campaigns. There are many ways to promote your business for free. However, if you want your free ads to build your brand awareness, you need to be strategic about the way you approach each advertising channel.
Summary
While digital advertising has many benefits, such as low minimum investment requirements and the ability to target customers based on their location and browsing history, it can be difficult to measure the return on this investment.
Before you start investing in digital ads, make sure you have a clear goal for why you’re doing it and that you’re tracking your return on investment. With these steps in mind, you’ll be on your way to digital advertising success.
