If you are a business owner and want to bring your advertising to a higher level, there are some challenges you will have to overcome. Although scaling online advertising means higher costs, there are more important things you have to think of. Without refining the strategy and targeting the right audience you won’t see significant improvement no matter how much money you invested. To make the most of your future campaign, consider partnering up with expert digital marketing services which will help you navigate the process more effectively and ensure maximum return on your investment.
Now, let’s see what are the most common problems you will have to face and what are the best solutions to them.
Recent studies showed that the average cost per click (CPC) for Google Ads has increased by over 15% in the last 2 years. This is a huge problem for smaller businesses whose budgets are limited - they can end up in a tough situation because larger companies can easily outbid them for main keywords and ad placements. We have to be aware that online advertising is more popular than ever and all businesses are investing in PPC and ads. Naturally, it leads to decreasing the chances of standing out. So, what is the solution?
You should focus on keywords which are closely aligned with your business, and avoid competing for broad, pricey terms. That is the smartest way to increase your chances of becoming visible on the market. There are many automation tools which can help you to predict bidding outcomes and maximize ROI. Also, education is always a good solution - learn about smart bidding strategies and deploy them. Remember to always keep an eye on the expenses. If you notice that the cost of a particular keyword rises too much, you should change focus and turn to some similar, but less competitive terms.
If this sounds like too much for you, find an experienced digital marketing agency and schedule a meeting. Hire them to help you with refining your overall strategy and suggest to you how to save money and manage the budget smartly.
No matter what your budget is, if you show your ads to the wrong audience - the results won’t be satisfying. The campaign will be effective only if it is presented to the right people. The problem with targeting the right audience is that privacy rules and settings have changed a lot recently which resulted in harder user data gathering. The access to third-party data is reduced, which means that insight into user behaviour is limited.
Because of that, businesses are forced to rely on first-party data from direct interactions, which can lead to poor targeting. The main consequence of poor targeting is low conversion rates, and even worse - wasted money. Here is what you can do - make detailed customer profiles based on first-party data from purchases, website visits and other interactions. Another good strategy is retargeting campaigns based on actual customer behavior and taking advantage of CRM tools for improved targeting. There are plenty of these tools available - find the one which is the most suitable and convenient for you and the members of your team.
Ad fatigue occurs when your audience sees your ad too often which results in losing interest. It further leads to CTR decreasing and the campaign becoming less effective. But don’t worry - there is a solution. You can try some of the methods to avoid ad fatigue successfully.
The very first step is monitoring metrics such as frequency and CTR. Frequency is defined as the average number of times people see your ad, and if that number is close to ten - it is too frequent. Check your CTR to see if you need to make improvements. You can make different versions of ads and rotate them from time to time, just to keep the content fresh.
In case that creating multiple ads is too exhausting for you, you can adjust the ones you have. Change the colors - it doesn’t have to be a radical change, just a little switch can work wonders. Another method is rewording the content - by changing just a couple of words can make a much more engaging ad. The same will happen if you change the images and other visuals. Pay attention to the ad format you are using - you can change that, too. The best format depends on the platform where you are advertising your business. If you use social media, consider trying image, video and carousel ads and see what works best for your audience.
Return on Investment (ROI) is the parameter that will show you how your ad campaign is actually going. It will show you how much you are getting for investment and you can calculate it by dividing the profit by the cost of the campaign - it is simple as that. This is the exact formula:
ROI =(Profit/Cost) x 100 (%)
There are many tools which can help you measure ROI, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Quintly, RD Station and many others. They are used to monitor and analyze campaign performance, providing helpful insights on the overall success. It is proven that conversion rate and CPA are influencing the ROI the most. The best methods for increasing ROI of your ad campaign are audience segmentation and A/B testing. Audience segmentation will help you with better targeting, while A/B testing will help you find the best version of the campaign.
Like every niche, digital marketing has the laws it has to follow - General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). GDPR is the strictest privacy and security law in the world. If you want to follow all the rules, we suggest consulting a legal professional, just in case. You must gather and proceed customer data legally, fairly and transparently, and handle them securely. Consent must be specific and given freely - you have to keep clear documentation. All the rules are applied to both first-party and third-party data.
CCPA grants consumers the right to know everything about the personal info a business collects and how it is used/shared, the right to delete personal info collected from them and to correct inaccurate personal info. Also, consumers have the right to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal info collected from them. It may seem that these regulations exist only to make running your business harder, as you will have to do excessive research to make your ad campaigns abide by all these regulations, but there are some general steps you can take.
Invest in first-party data - gather the information needed to build an effective targeting audience. You can always lean on exciting customer data and use it for retargeting. Implement server-side tracking as it can provide you with a complete and accurate picture of your audience data, without running afoul of digital marketing privacy regulations. It sends user data to a domain/subdomain, creating an additional layer between the website and your data collecting platform, which results in increased security and control of user information.
For a detailed guide on online advertising compliance, check out the Federal Trade Commission’s website.
As you can see, scaling online advertising can be quite challenging. Although the budget can look as the most important, it is not - you need to work smart. You have to fine-tune targeting, create fresh and engaging content and be present on multiple platforms. Following all the rules can also be daunting and you can make mistakes without being aware of them. That is why we recommend partnering with experienced and reliable digital marketers - they can do all these things instead of you, and they will probably do it much better. If you work together, you can overcome all these obstacles and make the most of your online advertising.
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