Gone are the days of TV and radio ads that reach thousands of viewers and listeners, but have little in the way of conversions. Advertisers no longer have to use a shotgun approach to attracting and acquiring new customers.
Online advertising has ushered in a new era of advertising that is much more efficient at acquiring new customers.
This post breaks down 5 key components of a successful online advertising strategy that you business absolutely should be using. They are:
- Do Market Research
- Choose the Right Online Advertising Platform
- Get Creative
- Get Personal
- Monitor and Optimize
Let’s get into it!
1: Market Research
Online advertising is useless if you don’t understand your customer thoroughly. You’re trying to speak to them in a familiar way and convince them that they need your product.
“If you don’t know your customer, you don’t know your business.” – Peter Drucker
Building customer persona’s is a great way to make sure you’re targeting the right type of person.
This can be done by either surveying existing customers or by conducting interviews with potential customers.
2: Choose the Right Online Advertising Platform
Once you’ve identified your ideal customer, you need to decide what platform you want to advertise on.
Choosing the right platform is crucial to the success of your online advertising strategy and by choosing the right platform you can dramatically increase your ROI.
Choosing the right platform is based on three main things:
- Whether your target customer is on that platform, and
- Whether you can effectively target that customer on that platform, and
- Whether it is affordable for you to reach that customer on that platform.
With that in mind, here are some of the top platforms you can advertise on:
1. Facebook/Instagram
Since Facebook acquired Instagram, the Facebook and Instagram ads manager is built into one place. When you get Facebook ads, you can choose if you want them to appear on Instagram or not.
Facebook has a ton of data and their advertising engine is very mature. There’s a reason most eCommerce businesses use Facebook advertising. It converts well.
2. YouTube Ads
YouTube is the second largest search engine and is owned by Google. If you have an eCommerce business, you should absolutely be advertising on YouTube. YouTube provides two types of ads:
In-Stream Ads
In-Stream ads appear before, during, or after a video on YouTube. If you have a video on your YouTube channel, you can promote that video by creating an in-stream ad.
In-Display ads
In-Display ads appear in You tube’s sidebar. These ads are great for driving people to a landing page or a YouTube channel.
3. Google Display Network (GDN)
The Google Display Network is the largest display ad network on the internet.
GDN allows you to target people based on:
- Interests
- Behaviors
- Competitive Terms
- Demographics
- Location
You can then further refine your targeting with remarketing to people who have previously visited your site.
3: Get Creative
With the rise in online advertising’s popularity, ads are appearing everywhere. That means most user’s are being bombarded with ads, day in and day out.
To be successful, you need to grab the audience’s attention and make them want to take action.
Here are 3 tips on how to make creative ads:
Tip 1: Use Memorable Imagery
The image you use in your ad is a big part of grabbing attention.
Your ad needs to stand out from the crowd, and using a unique image will do just that.
Tip 2: Tell a Story
Stories are a great way of grabbing attention and making the audience curious.
Using a story will make the ad more interesting and most importantly, it will make the audience want to know more.
Tip 3: Be Persuasive
Your ad needs to tell the audience exactly why they should use you and exactly what the benefit is.
There is a metric called the creative score that measures how relevant your ads are to your target audience.
Unless you’re targeting the right audience, your creative score will be very low.
You can increase your creative score by:
- Using relevant keywords
- Creating compelling ad copy
- Using images that are relevant to your target audience
4: Get Personal
People are a lot more likely to take action when they feel like they know you, and you’re talking to them and solving their problems.
Here are three ways to make your online ads more personal
Method 1: Use Social proof
Social proof is when you make people feel like they can rely on you and trust you.
For example, you can show that you are trusted by big brands or that you’ve been featured in the media.
Method 2: Use Relevant Imagery
When you show a relevant image that your target audience can identify with, you can increase your CTR by 28%. The image needs to be relevant to your target audience.
Method 3: Use Relevant Copy
The copy you use in your ad is very important. The copy needs to be relevant to your audience, otherwise you risk turning people off.
Make sure you’re addressing the problem they have, which your product is solving.
5: Monitor and Optimize
Using the right platform and getting creative should drastically increase your conversion rate, but this is just the start of your online advertising journey.
Once your ads are running, you need to monitor them and optimize them.
Optimizing your ads can be done in a few different ways:
- Adjust your bidding
- Adjust your landing page
- Add new ads to your campaign
- Remove ads that are underperforming
You should be constantly monitoring your ads and making changes to the way they are running. You can do this by using the Facebook and Instagram Ads Manager, Google Analytics, and the YouTube Ad Performance Dashboard.
