Getting involved in paid ad campaigns online can be very overwhelming and nerve wracking if you are a new or inexperienced marketer. However, paid ads also have the potential to provide you with a level playing field against those who are ranking organically for certain keywords.
It allows you to have the same reach as someone who has been building a website for years. You can instantly have your links in front of your target audience and achieve your objectives and goals for building a list, generating traffic to your website, and earning more profits.
You have to be careful to not only limit your budget to what you can afford to spend, but also be strategic with your ad campaign creatives. You need to make sure that the money you do spend is going to work in your favor.
Below, you’ll find 10 tips to serve as reminders and best practice guidelines that will help your foray into paid advertisements be as painless and as rewarding as possible. Pay attention to evolving techniques and tips, too – because trends can emerge and guidelines can be put in place that may impact your campaign strategies.
Tip 1)
Learn All You Can About Who You’ll Target with Your Ads
When you are running paid ads on various platforms, the first thing you’ll be able to do is pick the specific people that you want to target. To do this, you can determine basic demographic information such as their age, gender, income level, and even their geographic location.
You may also be able to choose to have your ads presented to people who have certain interests and behaviors online. For example, if they like a certain brand or personality, you can target people who have the same interests.
For many ad platforms, they will allow you to create a look alike audience for your ad campaigns to target. You’ll basically give the ad platform the parameters of who you want their algorithm to use to base their decisions off of whenever they are trying to find additional people to show your ads to.
Whenever you have your core audience developed, you have the opportunity to further segment that file into smaller groups of people. This can help you create more targeted ad campaigns that will convert better for you.
Tip 2)
Have a Specific Objective for Your Ad Campaigns
You never want to be paying for advertisements without having a goal or objective in mind. You have to be able to measure the results of your campaigns to see whether or not it achieved the goal you set out to reach with it.
For example, you may simply want to drive traffic to your website in order to promote a new product that you have launched, or even to help you build a list of subscribers in your niche.
Some people use paid ads so that they can improve their conversion rate. Whenever they are using organic methods to generate traffic, they tend to scoop up followers who may not be as interested in the content as the person you’re able to specifically target.
You may even be running paid ads just to increase awareness about your brand. If you take this route, you may not necessarily be selling something immediately, but instead you are helping people see you as a leader in your niche.
Tip 3)
Gather a Strategic List of Keywords and Phrases to Bid On
In many cases, your ads are going to be shown to people who are relevant to a specific keyword or phrase. If you are using a search platform, they will have typed in those phrases specifically, or something related to it.
Therefore, you want to have a list of strategic keywords and phrases that you can bid on that will allow you to have your ad shown without paying an arm and a leg. You also want to make sure that you are including negative keywords that you exclude from your results.
Think about the pain points that people use in your niche to search for information that they need. For example, they will often search based on the end result they want to achieve, such as how to lose weight fast – or the frustrations they are experiencing, such as addicted to sugar.
You want to use keyword tools, whether they are free or paid, so that you can find both broad and long tail keyword phrases that you can add to your campaigns. You’ll have an easier time achieving your budget goals using long tail keyword phrases than you will with broad ones that everyone is competing for.
Tip 4)
Know What Kind of Creatives Appeal to Your Audience
The first thing that will probably stand out to the person you are targeting with your ad is the visual element of it. Therefore, you want to have a visually appealing creative that grabs the attention of your target audience.
It should be high quality and in a media format that your target audience desires. Make sure that the pictures and graphics that you are using are in line with the niche topic and that they are top quality.
You can find stock images on various sites that are free or paid that you can use in your ad campaigns. Make sure you are using colors that will stand out, but that are not too flashy to the point they turn off consumers.
You can have white space in your ad, but use it strategically so that the audience’s eyes are drawn to the important elements, such as headlines or other key points. If you are using video ads, make sure you are keeping it short and delivering a strong call to action.
Tip 5)
Carefully Craft the Headline and Call to Action for Your Ads
The headline is perhaps the second most important element of your paid advertisements, next to the image that the consumer will see first. You need to practice at improving the conversion rate of your headlines.
You might want to create a swipe file of certain buzzwords or phrases that you see others using so that you can tweak them for your own ad campaigns at a later date, without copying anyone outright.
A headline should never be too long when you are using paid ads. You want to make sure that you are using power words that will compel the user to pay more attention to your post or add listing.
You want to be using the keywords that you have researched and gathered within your headline, and touch on the specific pain point or goal that the user is likely to be thinking about.
While the headline is the first thing your audience will read, the call to action should be the last. This is where you specify to the target audience exactly what you want them to do next.
Some examples of delivering a call to action include telling them to sign up for something, to download something, to get something or try it for free, or to simply learn more by clicking on a link.
Tip 6)
Estimate and Stick to Your Ad Budget
When you are considering the use of paid ads, you never want to go above what your budget will allow for. So the first thing you need to do is figure out how much you can afford to devote to your ad campaigns.
Not only do you need to set an overall monthly budget for your paid ad campaigns, but you also need to have a daily budget that you are willing to spend on each platform that you run ads on.
Many people sign up for paid ads, and max out their bidding numbers, assuming that the highest bid will ensure that they get a great return on their investment when it comes to profits.
You have to do more than that when you are setting up your ad budget. One of the most important things you want to consider is what you are willing to pay for each click or conversion to your website.
Not everyone who clicks on your link will end up being a paying customer, so you have to factor in the money that you will lose once someone clicks through and then leaves your site.
You have to figure out how many days you want your ad campaign to run, keeping in mind that you can update and improve your ads in the middle of a campaign run. You may want your ad campaigns to have an ongoing run, or you may want to limit it to a few days or a couple of weeks so that you can take time to analyze it afterwards.
Keep in mind that just as you can swap out creatives, you can also adjust your budget in the middle of a campaign. If you see that your ads are taking up too much money and not converting well for you, you can reduce the maximum bid that you are willing to pay as well as the daily allotment you want to spend on ads.
Tip 7)
Split Test and Optimize Your Ads to Achieve the Best Conversions Possible
Split testing, which is also known as A/B testing, is a great way to optimize your ad campaigns so that they’re converting well for you. If you do this, you’ll be pitting two different creatives against each other to see which one works best with your target audience.
It’s important that you not just split test, but that you track the results so that you can then optimize your ads to work even better. Take the winning ad and split test it against another creative to see if it continues its winning streak or not.
It’s usually a situation where you swap out a single variant, such as a headline. You can either do that with your split testing of ad creatives or you can just test one type of ad against another, even if they’re completely different.
Tip 8)
Try Different Platforms and Placement for Your Ads
With paid ads, many people like to start with one platform and then learn how to master additional ones. If you’re selling a book on Amazon, you might run Amazon ads. But if it’s for your own site, you’ll run them on other platforms.
Many people run ads on Google and Bing. Search engine ad placement allows you to have your listings above the organic search results, even if the site owner has achieve the highest level of SEO.
You can also run ads on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok are all common places where people run ad campaigns to drive traffic to their sites.
You can even purchase ads like banner ads to be placed under the header or in the sidebar of someone else’s blog. Or you can buy a solo ad, which is an email sent out to someone’s list who has relevant subscribers.
Tip 9)
Time Your Ad Campaigns Precisely for Good Results
When you are running paid ads, you don’t have to make them go live the second you create your listing. You can schedule them to run at certain times of the day, and for a specific length of time.
The timing of your ad campaigns can differ, depending on the demographic you are targeting as well as the platform that you are listing your ads on. Certain brands have reported different times that will work best for them, such as 9 to 5 for business brands.
You will probably hear differing opinions about when the best time to run your ads is. Some people believe they should only be run on nights and weekends, while others will tell you that typical working hours are the best time to run your ads.
You want to determine when your target audience is most likely to be online so that they will see and engage with your ads whenever you run them. You may also want to consider the demographic and what time of day they are likely to be online.
For example, Facebook caters to a crowd of 30 years and older, with many of the older generations preferring this platform over others – so they may be online during the day and going to bed early.
TikTok, on the other hand, is dominated by people who are 30 years old and younger, so they may be working or in school and online to see your ads after these hours, into the late night.
You can look at existing engagement that you have on organic posts to see when people are most likely to engage with your brand. Or, if you don’t have any of those results yet, you can simply test different times to see what works best for your niche audience.
Tip 10)
Take Advantage of Retargeting Ad Options
When someone is sent to your website, but they don’t turn into a converted sale, you have the opportunity to pay for retargeting ads. Sometimes, a user will land on your site and scan it for a minute, before they click away.
They may even intend to go back later, but then forget about your domain. It’s been said that it takes some consumers several moments of exposure to your offers in order to convert into a sale.
Retargeting ads can be purchased on various platforms such as Facebook and Google. A cookie will be used to store the data in the web browser so that it remembers who visited your website and bounced without converting into a specific action.
Using paid ads is something you should do sparingly in the beginning until you understand how the concept works and can be applied to harness the built-in audience that these platforms can provide you with.
Then, once you know how things operate, and you are seeing small success, you can scale your paid ads up to the next level. You always want to make sure that you are bringing in more money than you are spending before you invest even more in it.
