Whether it’s Google ads or ads on Facebook, marketing has become increasingly complex as it moves from traditional marketing to entirely digital platforms. To launch a successful marketing campaign, you’ll need a diverse skill set; you’ll have to be creative, good with numbers, and very technical.
To build a perfect campaign you’ll need to experiment with what works best – in fact, building the right campaign for your business involves a lot of trial and error. But while the perfect campaign takes time to build, there are certain tips and tricks you can take that would make the journey much easier, and will get you the results that you want quicker.
If you’re looking to launch your own ad campaign, follow these tips on how to manage it and you’ll have a viral ad campaign in no time!
1. Determine your campaign’s goal
Before planning your ad campaign, you’ll need to determine what you want to get out of the campaign. Are you looking to sell 50 products by the end of the month? Get 10 new clients? Increase revenue by 10%?
Each business has different goals and needs, and your marketing should be aligned with the general goals of your business. Your marketing goal could be measured by numbers such as sales or profits, or it could be measured by qualitative metrics like customer satisfaction or brand image. For example, some campaigns are launched to generate buzz and establish the brand.
Figuring out what your ad campaign’s goals are should be the first step to planning and managing your ad campaign.
2. Decide how much your campaign budget is
Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a free ads campaign. To get your campaign up and running, you’ll need to spend money, and determining how much money is going into your campaign is most helpful if you do it in the early stages of planning.
By budgeting, you’ll find out how much content you can create, what strategy to follow, how many ads you can run and how far they’ll reach.
3. Create your content
Now that you have your foundation built, you’re ready to start writing and designing. These are creative processes that require a lot of brainpower and can be especially time consuming, so you’re probably wondering how realistic it is for you to create your own content.
The good news is that you don’t have to! Most companies outsource content creation to freelance writers and designers as long as budgeting allows it (see tip #2!). With the help of freelancers, you can focus on the high-level strategy of your campaign’s content.
The bad news? You’ll still have to give the general direction your freelancers have to take when creating your content, visually or otherwise. You know who the ads are for and what the goals are, and you’ll have to communicate this to the freelancers for them to create content that suits your campaign.
4. Find Your Audience
It doesn’t matter how nice your campaign looks or how much money you’ve spent on it, if your ad doesn’t show up for the right people, it won’t be getting you the results you need. That’s why it’s important to research your target audience.
If you have an existing customer base, look into who they are and what they do and try to identify similar segments. Research the kind of people who would be interested in your product, and identify personas that could benefit from your product or service. Frequent articles, forums or pages your audience would read and understand the language they use, and incorporate it into your ads
Once you’ve identified a group to target for your ad, run different ads targeting more specific segments of that group. For example, if you’ve identified students as your target audience for your product, run an ad that targets secondary school students, and other ads that target undergraduate, graduate or postgraduate students.
From the findings of these different ads, you’ll be able to understand which of these is your preferred target audience, which allows you to launch highly-targeted ads from there on.
5. Track How Your Ads Perform
In order to know how to direct your ads moving forward and for you to know what changes to make to them, you need to document how your ads perform over time.
While managing your own ad campaigns, you’ll be able to download weekly reports showing you how your ads are performing in different aspects. Here are some of the KPIs you need to pay attention to:
1. Frequency – How many times on average does one viewer see your ad?
2. Reach – How many people have your ads reached?
3. Impressions – How many times have your ad been shown?
4. The cost per click – How much does one person clicking on your ad cost you?
While this data is important to track, it’s even more important to understand why and how this data is changed. Add your own notes to the sheet, and theorize what changes you could possibly make to have the campaign bring better results. As long as you’re keeping a record of your own notes, you’ll avoid repeating the same mistakes you’ve made previously, and you’ll avoid what hasn’t worked for you in the past.
As you change your ad campaign around, keep your historical data and identify what version of your campaign has worked best.
Like anything else, managing your own ads campaigns is a skill that you can develop over time. To get the most out of your campaign, follow the best practices outlined by experts in digital marketing: determine why you’re running the campaign first, and who you’re running it for. Decide on how much you’re willing to spend to run this campaign and optimise it to get your money’s worth! Most importantly, don’t forget to track how well your campaign is performing, since tracking your campaign’s performance is what allows you to tweak it and improve it further.
As long as you build a solid foundation for your campaign, do your research, and experiment with your ads campaign, it’ll be as good as you want it to be!