Are your digital ad campaigns giving you the ROI you seek? The secret to extracting the most out of your digital ad campaigns lies in optimization.
Campaign or ad optimization is all about boosting the performance of your digital ads across the right platforms to reach the right audience. When done right, digital ad optimization helps you
- target the right audience
- create personalized content
- reduce the cost of lead acquisition
- use the right digital tools and platforms
By following an optimization strategy, your marketing team can create appealing ads, increase their performance and drive more revenue across digital channels.
Why optimize your digital marketing campaigns?
Consider these statistics:
- Inefficient marketing strategies -While businesses in the US spend 51.3 percent of their total ad budget on digital marketing, only 61 percent of marketers say their digital marketing strategy is working.
- Digital clutter – With consumers being exposed to anywhere from 4000 to 10000 (or more) digital ads each day, cutting through the clutter needs a carefully thought-out marketing strategy.
- Poor ROI – The top marketing challenge for 40 percent of marketers is proving the return on their digital marketing investment. Despite spending a large percentage of their budget on digital marketing, marketers are not able to gauge the results.
- Lack of segmentation -58 percent of marketers find segmenting and targeting their audience challenging, making it difficult to personalize their campaigns.
- Lead generation challenges -80 percent of digital marketers find lead generation challenging – they find it difficult to track and optimize the different phases of their customers’ journey
Optimizing your digital marketing campaign ensures your ads stand out from the clutter and reach the right audience. Fine-tuning your digital marketing strategy is an excellent way to create smart ads that boost traffic, attract engaged customers and improve sales.
Six ways to optimize your digital ad campaign
Understand your target customers
Defining buyer personas is the first step to segmenting your audience and knowing which channels you should focus on. It is also the basis for deciding the type of messaging, tone and vocabulary across different channels. Some of the sources of information that can help you create an accurate buyer persona include:
- Your current customer base
- Landing page forms
- Market research
- Competitor analysis
- Interviews and surveys
- Social media and Google Analytics
Determine the channels
A digital marketing channel is a platform that you can use to market your offerings to target consumers and can include:
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Paid Search
- Organic Search
- Display marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Website
Determine which channels your target audience spends time on to maximize the impact of your digital ad campaign. Market research, competitor analysis, social media listening, and brand monitoring are some ways to find out which channels you should focus on.
Other things to consider include:
- Where your target audience lives
- the kind of content you will create
- the channels that best convert
Create a multi-channel marketing strategy
Customers not only interact with brands on different channels but expect seamless interaction and experience across these platforms. One study found that these ‘hybrid consumers’ engage with brands across an average of 20 channels.
Multi-channel advertising campaigns help you reach a larger audience and offer a seamless experience when they switch between channels.
Create content optimized for each platform
Create engaging, relevant, and helpful content that resonates with your target consumers across multiple channels. If you have created accurate buyer personas, you can segment your audience and communication. Segmentation will help you design highly personalized content with insights –
- if your prospects prefer to talk informally or formally
- the vocabulary they use
- whether they like to read content with technical terms
- if they like emojis, videos, or images
Decide the metrics
Apart from determining the Key Performance Indicators (KPI), you need to craft a strategy for measuring and tracking your digital campaign’s performance.
While KPIs can vary based on the platform, the ones that can help you optimize your digital ad campaign include:
- Return on Ad Spend
- Cost per lead
- Monthly qualified leads
- Cost per click
- Conversion Rate
- Retention rate
- Click-through rate
- Impressions
- Social media engagement
- Signup rate
- Email bounce rate
- Lifetime customer value
Adjust your campaigns
Tracking relevant KPIs and A/B testing helps you understand which keywords, content types, media, and channels are giving you the best results. You can also use specific analytics tools to understand which parts of the digital ad campaign the target consumers are not engaging with.
Digital marketing tools help you optimize your campaigns with automated alerts and real-time updates. For instance, you can stop focusing on an underperforming channel and allocate resources to a better-performing channel.
These are some strategies that help you maximize your return on digital marketing investment, boost conversions and sales revenue.
Tracy is the Design Manager here at Redwood Creative. She’s been designing amazing graphics and web layouts for large and small businesses for upwards of 7 years.
