Even in an unpredictable economic climate, 34% of B2B companies plan to increase their marketing budgets this year. More than half of businesses are specifically focused on increasing their LinkedIn and Google Ads budgets.
So what are the reasons behind this trend? Now, if you get your digital ad campaigns right, you can have a great ROI.
Building and maintaining a digital ad campaign can feel like a daunting task, especially if you have limited time, can't keep up with the latest best practices, or can't constantly check campaign performance. Additionally, digital ad campaigns don't always have immediate implementation results, so it's difficult to determine if you're moving in the right direction.
No one wants to see their digital advertising dollars go to waste on underperforming campaigns. To help you avoid this common pitfall and get the most out of your ad budget, we've put together the following five essential tips.
1. Know your audience
Understanding who your target audience is and their weaknesses is an important foundation for building an advertising campaign. This is especially important as digital marketing continues to evolve and more customers expect personalized buying experiences.
In fact, in one study, more than half of B2B companies that have moved their marketing activities to a more personalized approach reported that this strategy was more or less effective.
By conducting customer surveys and interviews, and analyzing website analytics, you can better understand your target audience.
By speaking to your target audience's grievances and desires, you can grab their attention and arouse their curiosity. They'll feel like you understand them, and in turn, you'll begin to gain their trust.
To take this one step further, you can develop buyer personas. Creating buyer personas allows you to gain a more detailed and focused perspective on different groups within your target audience. This allows you to create digital ads specific to different types of buyers in your target audience. This Aspire article explains the steps required to create a buyer persona.
2. Set clear goals
Like any marketing campaign, digital advertising requires clear and reasonable goals. Without it, measuring campaign success would be extremely difficult.
It's always a good idea to use the S.M.A.R.T. acronym when setting goals.
- S- specific
- M-measurable
- A - attainable
- R-realistic
- T-Timely
Digital ad campaigns usually have the goal of generating leads and increasing brand awareness. When using the S.M.A.R.T. method, one of these goals would be:
For our next digital advertising campaign, we hope to increase website traffic from digital ads by 15% within the next 6 months and increase the brand awareness of the business.
You might be wondering, “How many ads should I create to reach my goals within my budget?”
Based on our experience with our clients, there is no right answer. It depends on who your target audience is, what type of ads you're using, and what channel you're advertising on.
3. Choose the right channel
Choosing the best channel for an ad campaign is critical to the success of an ad campaign. To choose the right channel, consider factors such as audience preferences, budget, and what you want to accomplish with this campaign.
Here are the most common channel types:
- Social media - This includes platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
- Search Engines - Google Ads and Microsoft Ads (previously known as Bing Ads)
- Display ads - Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads (using LinkedIn's Audience Network), AdRoll
4. Create engaging ad content
Creating compelling ad content goes hand in hand with the first tip: “Know your audience.” Writing content with attention-grabbing headlines is much easier once you understand your target audience and the platforms you use.
Also, when creating ad content, it's important to keep in mind what parts of the buyer journey you want to target. Most individuals target prospects at the bottom of the funnel, yet only 5% of buyers are on the market at any given time. To develop a full-funnel digital advertising strategy, you need to create content such as blog posts, e-books, and white papers to keep your business in mind and maintain engagement with 95% of other buyers that aren't currently on the market.
Try to emphasize the benefits over the features of the product or service. By doing so, I feel that the advertisement was more helpful rather than being sympathetic to readers and selling well.
Every platform has different requirements and limits, so keep an eye on the ratio between word count and image size.
5. Test and Optimize
When it comes to advertising campaigns, don't make the “set it up and forget it” mistake. Continuous A/B testing ensures that your ads are always optimized, and in turn, you can make the most of your ad budget.
A/B testing is the process of comparing multiple ad versions with different variables. This allows you to determine whether specific copies or images are more effective for your target audience.
The importance of testing only one variable at a time cannot be overemphasized. If you run multiple tests, you won't know what changes have affected ad placement and implementation results.
“Overall, well-planned A/B testing can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of marketing efforts.” -Neil Patel
A/B testing can be applied to every aspect of a digital ad campaign.
- audience targeting
- Ad copy
- Ad creative/image
- ad headlines
- landing page
These are just a few examples of variables that can be tested.
To measure the success of these A/B tests, it's a good idea to start with metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. If you want tips on how to optimize your landing pages, check out this Aspire article.
Bottom line: Achieve high ROI with digital ad campaigns
Maximizing your ad budget depends heavily on understanding your audience and their needs, setting clear and attainable goals, choosing the most appropriate channels, creating content that resonates with your audience, and continuously testing and optimizing various aspects of advertising. By focusing on these areas, we can achieve better implementation results and get on the path to making the most of digital advertising costs.
These tips provide the information you need to run a successful ad campaign, but there are other marketing strategies to help your digital advertising efforts.
Looking to get more out of your digital advertising dollars? Book a free evaluation and we'll help you identify practical “quick wins” you can achieve.
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