Just like a house, an online advertising campaign built on a shaky foundation won’t hold up for long, if at all. In digital advertising, you create a solid foundation not by using some brilliant new tactic nobody has done before, but by doing the basics the right way, right out of the gate.
These essential tasks include defining your goals, picking the right ad platform, installing crystal-clear conversion tracking, and optimizing your landing pages. Whether you are advertising on Google, Meta, TikTok, or any other online platform, doing all these things right at the outset will give you the best chance for your ads to perform. In contrast, a poor foundation will hinder all of your advertising efforts, no matter how much you spend or how well you do everything else.
Define Your Goals
Without a clear objective, advertising is just throwing money to the wind. Is your goal to grow your brand visibility? Education? Generate sales/leads? This needs to be well thought out. Of course, everyone wants to generate more money for their business, but determining where your brand stands within your industry can have a massive impact on how your ads perform.
If you work in an industry with high competition and a long sales funnel (think B2B, SaaS, or real estate), only focusing on the bottom of the funnel sales may not be the most effective option. Especially when working with a limited budget. Building a campaign focused on awareness with a smaller ‘ask’, like signing up for an email list that you can later use for remarketing, may be more effective.
Determine the Right Ads Platform for Your Business
Before you do anything, you need to understand where your users are. Google is usually the most straightforward: if you offer a common product or service that people search for, Google usually makes sense. There are some highly competitive industries with very high cost per click (CPC) that might make Google more difficult, but generally, Google makes sense for common products/services.
If you offer a niche product or service that users aren’t searching for, then you need to have a very strong understanding of who your target audience is to determine what platforms make sense for your business.
Google, for example, is great for capturing high-intent searches from users actively searching for a product or service.
Facebook, on the other hand, is great for targeting users based on demographics and interests who might not know they need your product/service yet. Think about something like the Amazon Echo for example. When that product first came out, it’s unlikely very many people would be searching for “voice activated home speaker that does x, y, and z.” A platform focusing on demographics and interests (such as Facebook) would make a lot more sense for its digital advertising.
Clear, Accurate Conversion Tracking
This is where we get into the nitty gritty of actually running ads. Conversion tracking is arguably the most important aspect of any campaign. I have seen so many businesses say they have had “good” success running ads themselves, but have inaccurate tracking or no conversion tracking at all. Maybe you can get a few conversions without tracking, but there is no way to actually determine the effectiveness of your ads without it.
It is not uncommon to see the keywords or creatives that “make the most sense” be the biggest money wasters. Sure, it makes sense for a plumber to target the keyword “plumber near me,” but that also makes sense to every other plumber in your area. As a result, it might be the most competitive keyword with the highest CPCs, resulting in a high cost per conversion. Without clear, accurate conversion tracking, you will have a hard time determining this.
In addition to having this data for you to make informed decisions, it is also key to feed your ad platform with quality conversion data. Every ad platform is becoming more and more automated and relying on complex algorithms to determine the right users to show your ads to. You can do everything else right, but if the algorithm doesn’t know who to show your ads to, you will have a difficult time succeeding.
Two people making the exact same search for “white running shoes” can have completely different purchase intentions. One might be searching for a high-quality pair of shoes for running marathons, and one might be somebody just getting into running, looking for a durable pair of shoes that will last for years. That is the information that the algorithm sees from the users’ past search history, while the advertiser does not see that. But without feeding conversion data to the platform, it will not know which user is more likely to purchase your shoe.
PPC Landing Page Optimization
This is one of the most overlooked aspects of running ads in the digital space. Your landing page should reflect exactly what the user is looking for. Users have short attention spans and want to see what they searched for immediately. If a user searches for “water heater replacement” and they land on a general “services” page where they have to scroll past your 10 other services before they see “water heater services,” they are likely to leave. Best practices dictate that if you are targeting a specific product or service, you should have a page dedicated to that specific service.
Beyond having specific pages for specific services, you need to consider user experience, including page speed. A page that takes forever to load is going to have high bounce rates. Nothing is a bigger money waster than when users click your ad only to leave before the page even loads. Also, consider the user journey as they navigate your landing page or website. Services like Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity can be great tools for seeing how users interact and navigate your site.
Every industry or business is going to have different ways people interact with your landing page that will require testing, but generally, this is where I like to start:
- Core Value Proposition (should be near the top of the page, or in the hero image)
- Core Benefits: explain why the user needs your product/service
- Trust Elements: Do you have awards that you can share? “BBB A+ Rating” or “Best of Fort Collins Community’s Choice Award” can be great trust elements
- Social Proof: This can be things like Google reviews, testimonials, etc. But they need to be presented in a way that the user knows they are real.
- Objection Handling: Think about what might stop a user from paying for your product or service, and mitigate that. This can be money-back guarantees, satisfaction guarantees, etc.
- Clear Call To Action: Tell the user what you want them to do. Try to come up with something more appealing than just “Request Quote” or “Buy Now.” Consider what they get out of it. Something like “Start Saving On Car Insurance” is better than “Request Quote.”
Optimize Your Offer
You need to have an offer that stands out and is irresistible to customers. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a small, local mom-and-pop roofing company, your offer needs to be worth it to the customer. With the internet at our fingertips, it takes one minute for users to look at 5 different companies and figure out who has the best offer.
That doesn’t just mean price. What do your customers get out of working with you? If you are a home service business, there are likely hundreds of other companies that have the same service as you. What makes you stand out from them, and why should a customer choose you over your competitors?
If you rely on quotes to provide pricing, find other ways to make yourself stand out aside from just pricing. Are you the highest reviewed company in your area? Do you have a specific innovation or patent for your product? Do you use high-quality materials that your competitors don’t use? Does your process remove unnecessary hurdles for the customer?
Testing
Always be testing new ad copy, new targeting, new landing page design, etc. If your goal is to improve performance, you should always be testing new things. Doing the same thing over and over isn’t going to magically improve results. If your goal is to gather a few more leads every month, you’re happy with your current cost per acquisition or return on ad spend, and you're not really looking for growth, then you can probably get away without changing much. But if you are trying to grow your business or improve your results, you should always be testing.
The only caveat to this is that you should have some additional budget to use for this (unless what you currently have isn’t working). If you have a campaign that is performing well and is netting a positive investment, don’t get rid of it to test something new. I always find it best to run a test alongside a successful campaign to mitigate loss in case your tests don’t perform well.
Patience
The age-old saying in digital marketing is that SEO takes time and PPC is immediate. However, while it is true that paying for ads will immediately allow you to show ads, that does not mean that conversions will be immediate. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked 24 hours after launching a campaign why a client isn’t getting their inbox flooded with leads.
PPC works faster than some other digital marketing channels, but it still takes time to drill down your targeting, identify the right users, and formulate ad copy that appeals to users, among other tasks.
Additionally, algorithms take time to gather the data needed to identify high-intent users and how to best allocate your budget. Don’t assume that Google or Facebook knows exactly who your audience is, because it is different for every company, industry, and area. Ad platforms need your campaign to collect conversion data so they can identify who those users are.
The smaller the budget, the more patience you need. A company spending millions on ads can generally make determinations on how effective a campaign is pretty quickly because of the volume their budget drives. But if you are working with a budget that is only driving a few clicks per day, it can take weeks to months to determine the effectiveness of a campaign.
Look Beyond The Ads Dashboard
The last foundation to success with digital advertising is looking beyond just your ad dashboard. At the end of the day, ads are doing nothing more than putting your business in front of users. If you are confident you are doing everything right within your ad platform and still struggling with ad performance, consider places where you can improve as a business. If you are driving the lowest possible cost per conversion and still aren’t profitable, can you improve your unit economics (customer lifetime value, cost of goods sold, margins, etc)? Does your brand have authority? Can you improve your product/service?
Ads are just one part of your business, and too many businesses are counting on digital ads alone to succeed. Every company should have a diverse digital marketing portfolio that goes beyond just running ads, including SEO, social media, and content for video sites like YouTube. The stronger your brand is across the web, the stronger your paid ad performance will be. If you need help getting the most out of your paid ads campaign, contact Beyond Blue Media today!
