Making the Most of Your Paid Digital Campaigns

Digital marketing can be a powerful tool if used correctly. With proper optimization, it can become the key to the success of your business. Every marketer has a strategy that they think will be best, but with how quickly things can change, what works today may not work tomorrow. This makes the importance of constant education, versatility, and a structured strategy with a plan that much more important. 

Strategy Always Wins- A strategy is important in sports, it’s important in board games, and it’s important in marketing. First, think of your goal, is your goal conversions, brand awareness, or website traffic? From there think of the best marketing mix to achieve that goal. Next, put yourself in the shoes of your target. If you were going to align with a brand, or purchase from them, what’s most important to you, and what would make you want to become a customer? Don’t be afraid to consult colleagues in this process either. You don’t have all of the answers, as no one should expect you to, and creating an open forum among your colleagues may give you an idea that you may not have thought of otherwise.

Think of it this way, you’re baking a cake without a recipe. You’re mixing in the flour and the eggs, adding a dash of this and a dash of that without actually measuring the ingredients. You turn on the oven to *whatever* temperature you think would be best, and bake the cake for what, an hour? Well, guess what, while you were adding your ingredients you didn’t add enough baking powder, you added too much salt, and you’re left with a flat and salty pancake. Do you want your marketing campaigns to be a flat salty pancake? Or do you want your campaigns to be a moist decadent chocolate cake? Make sure you always have a strategy and a plan. 

Never Stop Testing- If your first advertising campaign for your company or client is a huge success from day one, you’re either very lucky or a genius. Testing your targeting, creative, bidding strategy, and pretty much every aspect of your marketing campaigns is important. Many advertising platforms make it very easy to A/B test these different pieces of your marketing campaigns and you definitely should take advantage of that. Sometimes you may see a huge lift in one creative over another, or maybe no lift at all, but there’s always a better way and constantly testing is the way to make sure you’re always putting your best campaigns forward.

Bid Enough- The way most digital campaigns work is you’re bidding on the keywords or users against your competitors, and it’s very important to find out where the best threshold is. On Google, you’re bidding to appear in your target’s search query, whereas on social media platforms like Facebook you’re bidding against your competitors for your ad to show in the newsfeed of your target. The difference between your ad being served to your target as opposed to your competitors’ ad can be as little as a penny. Bidding to the right level on your campaigns can help you to beat out your competitors’ ads and have another chance at a new conversion.

But Not Too Much- For some advertising platforms, higher bids mean more high-quality inventory. For example, running a Google Universal App campaign, if you bid higher, you have the possibility of appearing in an ad on a YouTube placement. YouTube placements are considered premium placements as the result is usually high conversion. If you bid low, you won’t have access to the higher-quality inventory and may appear in a lower quality Google Display Network placement. You have to keep in mind though, that although you want to outbid your competitors if you bid too much you may be overspending for your placements, which will just drive your CPA through the roof. We’ve all run campaigns where we set the bids wrong, and the campaign has overspent but finding that sweet spot helps to avoid the unnecessary headaches of make-goods and refunds.

Properly optimizing your campaigns can be the difference between 1 conversion at a CPA of $100 versus 100 conversions at a CPA of $1. Although you spent the same amount, wouldn’t you like one hundred times the conversions? Now, this is a hypothetical situation that may be far from reality, but that doesn’t lessen the importance of optimization. Digital marketing can be scary, but following the proper steps to success makes those conversions oh so sweet, like that decadent chocolate cake.