Almost every business, from the biggest of brands to smaller companies are investing in online advertising, for the reason that it is currently the most cost-effective platform to advertise on.
Sure enough, you’ve heard of the wonders that digital advertising can do for your business, but are your online campaigns not giving you any concrete results?
It is a very common practise for businesses to just throw in ‘digital advertising’ into their marketing mix and not really optimize their campaigns to get the best of results.
And that’s how most businesses are just wasting their advertising budgets!
While big brands can afford this as they also use other channels for advertising; it’s really painful to see smaller businesses waste their limited budgets on poorly-designed online campaigns.
So if you aren’t really reaping rewards from your online campaigns, it’s time you make sure that you aren’t just blowing your budget.
We’ve come up with a 4-step process for you to go through, so you can optimize your online campaigns for the maximum ROI.
1. Figure Out The Best Online Ad Platforms For YOUR Business.
Now, you may have read tonnes of articles discussing why Google is better than Facebook or why you absolutely have to try LinkedIn and Instagram ads!
In reality, each platform has its own advantages and disadvantages and you should ideally use a mix of these platforms to achieve your marketing goals.
But bare in mind that your clients and potential customers may not be on the these online platforms. So you need to figure out, which platforms your ideal customers are on and optimize your campaigns for those platforms.
For example, if your business is the kind that most people are researching for on Google, then you need to have a great Google Adwords campaign running!
On the other hand, if your ideal audience is inclined to spend more time browsing through Facebook and are used to purchasing on Facebook, then you need to have a great Facebook marketing strategy in place.
Then again, if your business is B2C, Facebook generally becomes the best platform to get your brand’s name out there.
Likewise, if you are a B2B business, then LinkedIn is a great advertising platform for your business.
2. Understand Your Target Audience
Knowing crucial characteristics (such as demographics, behaviors and interests) of your ideal audience is key to creating an effective campaign.
It isn’t enough to just get a large number of people to your website and hope they’d convert to customers.
It’s about getting the RIGHT customers there.
Always remember, quality trumps quantity.
The more targeted your campaigns are, the cheaper it’ll be to acquire your customers.
The best part is that Facebook, Google etc. have very advanced targeting options, so you can get your ads targeted based on location, gender, age, interests, nationalities, job profiles etc.
If you target your audience to match your ideal customers, you will attract the people most likely to buy from you. If you get a good balance of both volume and quality of audience, you’ll have a winning campaign.
3. Track and Review Your Results.
Here’s one the main reasons why most brand’s online campaigns fail.
With traditional advertising methods, you create campaigns that run for a long period and results are usually measured on a monthly or quarterly basis.
But with digital advertising, you will have to review your results every other week, to make sure that your ads are actually working. If they aren’t giving you desired results or if they are getting a good response, you have to tweak your campaign.
And this is a constant process.
You also have to be well-versed with your platforms tracking metrics. Don’t judge your campaign’s performance with just impressions and clicks. Rather focus on actual conversions and leads – these are the metrics that are going to bring revenue to your company.
Keeping a track of your campaigns results on a weekly basis will give you great insights into what’s working and what’s not, so you can modify your campaigns accordingly to get the best results.
4. Optimize not just your ads, but your website too.
If you’ve gotten all the previous points right, but you still aren’t getting good results, a good option would be to make sure that your website or your landing page is user-friendly and informative. A lot of businesses focus on creating great ads, but don’t really think about their landing pages.
Your landing page is equivalent to a salesperson, and a good salesperson can convince a hesitant customer to buy immediately whereas a bad one can drive away even an enthusiastic customer.
This is exactly what your landing page does.
A well designed landing page, with adequate information will push your lead to convert.
So make sure your landing page and website is optimized for conversions.
With online advertising, if you target the right people through the right platforms, you should be getting a good number of leads and conversions. If you aren’t seeing results, you’re definitely doing something wrong, and merely increasing your budget isn’t really going to help. So make sure you’ve covered all the points mentioned, and you should be converting a lot more customers!