Top 5 Ways To Ensure Your Paid Ad Campaigns Work

“Your favorite ice-cream, now creamier and tastier!”

“Clearance sale! 70% off on spring wear.”

“Love unicorns? Buy unicorn water bottles, shoes, and diaries!”

As an avid social media user, we’re sure you’ve seen these ads on your social media feed numerous times! But how many times have you actually gone ahead and clicked on them?

While paid ads have been in the game for quite some time now, they have to be perfect in order to work!

But wait.

How do you even define a perfect ad, anyway?

In an ideal world, this is the recipe for a perfect paid ad –

A lot of ideal customers
A dash of relevancy (offer what is valuable to them)
A dollop of creativity

Carefully blend the above, pick a social media platform of your choice, and ta-da! You have the perfect ad that is going to bring bang for your buck.

Alas! It is not that easy.

Here are 5 ways to make sure your paid ads perform better:

1) Choose your audience wisely

Ignoring your audience while building paid media campaigns is one of the biggest mistakes you could possibly make. Imagine a 45-year old man seeing an ad for yellow heels or a red tote bag! It is a common mistake to target anybody and everybody with your ads just to generate engagement and clicks. But, what is the point when the audience viewing and liking your ads isn’t interested in your product at all?

Here are some ways of picking the right audience –

• Leverage data generated by your ads – Collecting data from your ads can help you gain actionable insights about your audience. For instance – one group of users prefers the wake-me-up brand of coffee while the other set prefers the XYZ brand.
• Use Facebook’s Audience Insights – If you’ve chosen Facebook as your preferred social media platform, using Facebook Audience Insights is a good idea. Start by filtering by age, gender, and location and move on to adding interests. You can find out the pages they like, their activity, purchases, household income and more.
• Do a basic survey – Understanding your buyers can be made simpler by carrying out a basic survey that covers things such as their location, gender, age, likes, dislikes, job positions etc. Remember making a short and concise survey to encourage more users to fill it.

2) Select your social platforms carefully

Another crucial factor of paid ads is picking a social media platform you’ll use for your ad campaigns. Here are a few questions you must consider –

• Do my competitors target users on this channel?
• Does the audience that I am targeting engage on this network?
• Does my ad format fit the platform?

Source- https://www.b2bmarketing.net/

Let’s take a quick glimpse of the most popular platforms for your ads –

i) Facebook – With more than 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most popular platform for ads! It lets you target by location (even if it is within a 5-mile radius), interests, job description, past activity and more.

ii) Instagram – With 500 million monthly active users, Instagram boasts of 58% higher engagement rates than FB and a whopping 2000% engagement rate than Twitter! Being image and video heavy, it is good for sellers with visually appealing products.

iii) Twitter – Twitter does not have as many users as compared to FB and Instagram, but it is still the most popular network for organic engagement! Several brands today use this platform to drive brand awareness and interact with their customers. In fact, Twitter reports that 69% have purchased from an SMB after following them there.

iv) Pinterest – Visually heavy like Instagram, Pinterest is more target towards women. With an 81% female user base, it is regarded as a strong platform by eCommerce companies.

v) LinkedIn – Revolving primarily around the B2B market, LinkedIn is where you’re most likely to find leads with high income, with more than 75% users earning $50,000 or more.

3) Use engaging visuals with crisp text

When it comes to words, less is more! Think of Charlie Chaplin’s movies for that matter. Visual storytelling is something that most brands will decide to adopt in 2019!

To ensure high engagement for your ad, it is a good idea to make it visually appealing. In fact, content with engaging visuals performs better and receives up to 94% more views.

4) Make your ads mobile-friendly

We know how most people use social media on their smartphones, hence making it important to optimize your ads on mobile. Remember to –

• Use simple yet striking imagery – Your ad will be seen on a much smaller screen, hence it is important for you to ensure that they have the same impact on mobile devices. While your desktop ad can be more intricate with a good amount of text, mobile ads need to be simple with minimal text.
• Use Videos or GIFs – Video ads on social media have been doing well on mobile. Make a video or GIF by combining your company’s products or simply make instructional videos to boost engagement. Remember to keep it short and crisp!

5) Leverage retargeting ad campaigns

How many times have we wished to bring back a prospective buyer who viewed your product, but decided to leave the site? Well, guess what? There is a way.

Retargeting!

Retargeted ads are seen by people who have already visited your website but did not complete their purchase. These ads are 76% more likely to be clicked than regular banner ads, making it a must-adopt-strategy!

Let’s quickly take a look at the two main types of retargeting –

i) Pixel-based: The most common type of retargeting, pixel-based retargeting re-displays your ad to an anonymous visitor. So when a user leaves your website, their browser cookie helps show ads of products they viewed on your website.

ii) List-based: This method of retargeting shows your ads to the contacts that you already have in your database. Although not as popular as pixel-based, list-based lets you customize your ads on the basis of your user’s previous interactions with the company.

Creating a killer paid ad is all about understanding your audience, utilizing the features a platform has to offer, and determining how much you’re willing to invest! With the top 5 ways listed above, you should be able to get started and experience success in no time.

Need help with your Marketing Strategy? Contact us!