How to Reach the New Post-Lockdown Shopper
28th May 2020
Good SEO on a limited budget! WTF. Is that even possible in this day & age?
12th August 2020
How to Improve Your Digital Ad Campaigns in 6 Easy Steps
“You can adjust your campaigns to glean the most data, conversions, and brand loyalty with small changes.”
Are my digital ads keeping up with the times?
The digital age is upon us, and more consumers are playing and shopping online. This creates an ideal gap in the market for e-commerce and online marketing. Many marketers, however, fail to reach the full potential of their campaigns because of a few small lapses.
The industry changes at a rapid pace, and that means our campaigns should be adjusted frequently too. If your ads aren’t keeping up with the latest digital marketing advancements, it impacts their efficacy and your ability to reach and exceed goals. If your ad campaigns are set and forgotten, you’ll miss out on advancements in machine learning, artificial intelligence, automation, and new platforms like TikTok.
Top 6 Tips on How to Optimise Your Campaigns
The task of adjusting your campaigns to include seemingly complex tools can seem daunting, but you can adjust your campaigns to glean the most data, conversions, and brand loyalty with small changes. Even incorporating automation and machine learning into a campaign can take only a few minutes! If you know how, making sure your ad campaigns keep up with the times is easy.
#1 Think, how can I personalise?
Using Google or Microsoft’s customising and remarketing tools, you can personalise every advert. According to research about 67% of millennials expect companies to customise and personalise marketing to them. Using these tools is an easy way to access epic results.
You can put a formula or code into areas on an advert that allows for different information to show on the advert depending on criteria you set. Kind of like formulas on a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet, you can set if / then criteria by ad.
If, for example, you run a franchise of retail stores in South Africa, and different provinces have different offerings and prices, you could customise adverts to vary the data shown based on the location of the viewer. A person in Gauteng would see the offer and prices relevant to Gauteng, while someone in cape Town would see the info relevant to them. Using these tools can save you hours and hours of work duplicating and recreating ads with small variables and uploading each one by one.
#2 Think, how can I inform automations?
Smart marketing departments make use of Google and Facebook automations that use artificial intelligence to optimise your adverts. It’s easy to use and can significantly increase your reach, conversions, sales, clicks, and leads generation (or whatever your measurable goals are). Google’s automation, for example, considers the device a person is using, their geographic location, and their browsing history. Some even suggest Google considers the weather and stock market conditions in its automation.
This means that using automation can give you an edge over your competitors. To optimise your automations, make sure you inform your bid strategies of promotions coming soon. This is an easy way to make your automated advertising even more effective. Also called seasonality, you can inform automations to prepare for this like Easter, Christmas, spring, summer, and Black Friday.
If a time is coming soon in your campaign where you need more aggressive promotion because it is a key season in your industry, inform your automations beforehand. On the GoogleAd platform, for example, you can do this through “Seasonality Adjustments”. Google will even give you instructions so that you can load what’s needed and not miss out on key dates.
#3 Think, how can I access affinity audiences?
Affinity or in-market audiences are audiences related to your current audience. You can discover such audiences by watching online behaviour in real time and looking for patterns or preferences in the audience you have already built. Are people buying similar additional products? At what times are they purchasing most? What location are they from? What interest do they have and share with others in the audience?
The aim of using affinity audiences is to find more users who are interested in your product or users who are inclined to purchase. On the platforms you use, you will find targeting tools that you can use to discover related audiences. An easy way of targeting affinity audiences is to build an audience of people interested in products related to the one you’re selling.
If you’re selling fitness wear, for example, you could also target sneakers, gym equipment, and exercising tools like gym balls, Pilates mats, and even gym socks. Often broader audiences that target multiple interests can cost more because of the higher reach, but it’s worth it when those conversions start rolling in.
#4 Think, how can I make videos easily?
The stats are in, and video is officially more attention-grabbing than static imagery on most social media platforms. Creating video content that is original can be time-consuming and costly, heavy on our resources, and still result in dated content. Creating video fast to update campaigns on the fly is easier than you think.
Some Social media platforms like Facebook offer a video editing kit that can turn static assets into high quality videos! Other apps like Quik, Legend, and Videoshop can also help you create dynamic content. Today, thanks to a host of mobile apps and the vast popularity of creating video, you can make high quality video for your ads in under ten minutes!
#5 Think, what about approval times?
Anyone working on Facebook and Google ads on a regular basis may be used to getting approval for their adverts and campaign within hours. During peak advertising seasons like Black Friday, however, approval can take days. This is because the platform is flooded with media to approve.
Get in on the action early by preparing your campaigns well in advance and getting approval days, not hours, before they go live. This kind of planning ahead can benefit your campaigns throughout. You can also plan schedule and pause periods ahead of time.
#6 Think, how can I leverage off first-party data?
Did you know that 40% of any online brand’s revenue usually comes from only 8% of its users? What’s the significance? Remarketing and targeting loyal customers pays. You can use your current data to find lookalike audiences, and you can leverage your customer relationships to target people who resemble your most loyal spenders.
Social ads, in particular, can benefit most from this kind of tactic. Make use of insights on your platform of choice to pinpoint your top customers. Instead of advertising to suite your broadest audience, target the top 20% of spenders based on their age, gender, location, interests, and more.
With just a little extra love, you can take your digital marketing to the next level. Take advantage of the latest tech and be rewarded with ads that outshine the rest. Even if your campaigns are already running, you can tweak them using these tips and start reaping the benefits today.You can also contact us on (+27) 082 871 1004 or 073 293 2107 [email protected] for a customised digital package that is tailor made for your digital marketing needs.
Interested in more Digital Marketing Insights? Read more on our Digital Marketing Insights page today. All statistics and information discussed in this article is relevant at the time of publishing and may be subject to change without notice.Steven Green
Sporty fun loving “Half IronMan” with self-acclaimed degree in Search engine optimisation & Entrepreneurship. CEO & Founder of Trafficfundi, P.tch Digital & Greenies Comics.
