These days, if you want to get your brand noticed online, you need to invest in paid advertising campaigns.
Advertising on social media channels, such as Facebook and Instagram, can help increase the reach of your digital content. Advertising on search engines, such as Google or Bing, is a great way to leverage organic search and help your site get the traffic it deserves.
While digital advertising has simplified in recent years, if you aren’t familiar with paid media metrics it can be difficult to know if you’re seeing successful ROI.
In this post, we’ll outline five tips for creating successful paid media campaigns that will help boost your digital advertising efforts.
1. Use targeted advertising
The great thing about advertising online is that you have the power to use huge swaths of digital data to inform your targeting.
Targeted advertising allows you to show your ads to the most qualified customers-- people who are interested in your product. By leveraging digital data already present in your ad tech, you can target customers who have shopped with you before, abandoned a cart on your site, or even people who hang out with people who like your product.
Cool, right?
When advertising on Facebook and Instagram, you can target Core Audiences, Custom Audiences, and Lookalike Audiences. From there, you can refine your targeting for specific locations, demographics, behaviours, interests, and connections.
When advertising on Google, you can target audience demographics, custom intent, affinity, similar audiences, and create remarketing campaigns.
2. Use a mix of photo and video content
Using a mix of photo and video content in your digital advertising is a great way to diversify your content.
Video content has been proven to perform twice as well as static content in paid advertising campaigns. That being said, too much of a good thing can backfire after a while.
Instead of focusing on one kind of media, try different types of content and test them to see what performs best.
Short-form video, long-form video, moving images, and static images can all impact your audiences in different ways.
When advertising on Facebook, you can also use carousel ads which allow you to display both photo and video content at the same time. Here’s an example of this from Jasper’s Market.
3. Leverage platform-specific features
Each advertising platform comes equipped with unique features and offerings. Instagram has Stories, Live, and Shop features. Facebook has Stories, Groups, and Feeds. Whatever platform you’re on, think about how your customers are using it.
Do your Stories get more engagement than your feed posts? Maybe it’s worth creating some Instagram Story ads.
Are you part of a Facebook group whose members are interested in your product or business? Try targeting some ads towards those people.
Even Google boasts multiple different ad types, from Display ads to Search Network campaigns. Try them all and see which performs best with your audience.
If you’re advertising for social commerce, be sure to add product tags or pins to your posts to allow people to shop directly from your feed. This can be done on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook.
As well, being present on multiple social platforms will allow you to leverage more of these techniques, more often.
4. Create custom landing pages
Landing pages are stand-alone web pages created specifically for a paid advertising campaign. A landing page is often built to encourage a specific action from a customer, such as booking an appointment, buying a product, or signing up for an email list. Good landing pages also offer something in return, such as a download or a discount.
Brands that use well-optimized landing pages, alongside their paid media campaigns, can see up to 30% higher conversions.
When creating your paid media campaigns, consider building custom landing pages to support your ads. By setting up a specific landing page that focuses on a single action, you can create a stronger sales funnel for your incoming customers.
5. A/B test your ads and optimize along the way
A/B testing, sometimes called split testing, is the process of trying different ad sets at the same time to find out what content or copy works best.
A/B testing can also be used to test different target keywords to find out which brings in the most conversions.
You can A/B test many things, from your photo or video content to your copy to your landing pages as a whole.
By figuring out what works and what doesn’t, you create more optimized campaigns that can bring a higher ROI.
When running tests, be sure to pay attention to the data you’re collecting and use this to inform your next steps.
Ready to run your next successful paid media campaign?
The most important part of a successful paid media campaign is continued optimizations.
No matter what kind of ads you run or where, be sure to test, optimize, and test again.
As well, experiment with different kinds of content and tactics to ensure your ads are getting in front of as many qualified customers as possible.
Does paid media still sound like a headache? If you’re looking for support, our expert team of media buyers can help. Contact us to learn more about our high-converting paid advertising campaigns.
