Last week, we went through all the potential candidates for your online advertising platform. This week, I want to share 10 top tips to help you take your advertising the extra mile, so you can start winning conversions ASAP, and be one step closer to success. 

1. Understanding your ideal customer

The first step for any digital marketing strategy is to understand who your ideal customer is. Your goal here is to create resonating content to gain the trust of customers who have never met or talked to you before. By understanding your customer’s needs, desires, interests, behaviours and pain points, you’ll be able to connect with your customers and provide them with a solution to their problem. If you don’t take the time to understand your customer, all your advertising activity will be like taking a shot in the dark – extremely dangerous and ineffective. So next time, before you create your ad campaign, be sure to learn more about your customer’s current needs.

2. Choose Your Platform Wisely

It’s important to understand the value of each advertising channel. While search advertising platforms like Google Ads work well for businesses who are in clear demand, they are less effective for small businesses and startups who haven’t created brand awareness for their products and services. For small businesses, you want to create demand from the bottom up, and that’s where you can consider other advertising platforms like Facebook and your local online newspaper. Each platform offers different value, and just because it has worked for one company, doesn’t mean it will work for yours. By analysing each outlet, understand which one is worth investing your time and money into.

3. A/B Split-Testing

Advertising could be the main component for your online marketing campaigns. However, it can also be one of your most expensive costs too. To ensure that your paid ads are performing, effective and getting your money’s worth, A/B testing your ads regularly will help you understand which ads are getting your the conversions. A/B testing; also known as split testing is a way to test two ideas next to each other at the same time, to see what idea yields the best result.

Things you can A/B test include differing headlines, the description, the link and the keywords that the ad displays for.

4. Monitor And Measure Your Ads!

We cannot emphasize this enough. If an ad is not bringing you the sales you want, don’t be afraid to switch gears and try other platforms. Invest in a good analytic software to help track and analyse the performance of your ads. Learn how to read the results and metrics that come with each of these advertising platforms. Google Ads and social platforms show you things like average cost per click, impressions, conversions and click-through rates just to name a few.

5. Be Patient

Online advertising is very trial and error. Like mentioned previously, as a small business you need to keep measuring and testing the performance of your online advertisements. So with this, you must be patient. Take the time to test all your variables to ensure the full effectiveness of your ads.

6. Use Mobile-Centric Ads Because 96% Of People Use Mobiles

In the last 10 years, there has been a growing number of smartphone users, meaning there are so more and more reasons why small businesses should take advantage of advertising and marketing on smartphones. When it comes to creating ads, don’t forget to create mobile-centric ads. According to Intuitivedigital.com, CTR (click through rates) on paid mobile-centric ads have outpaced desktops CTRs in the last 2 years.  

7. Don’t forget to use geo-targeting

This is a must-have for all small businesses out there. Geotargeting is an advertising technique that markets directly to consumers based on their location. Of course, the more relevant an ad is to a consumer, the higher the chances of conversion right? So really, geo-targeting is highly beneficial for small businesses like restaurants, retail shops, and service providers.

Most advertising platforms allow for geo-targeting, so make sure to incorporate that into your advertising strategy.

8. Use negative keywords (for PPC ads)

If you plan to use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising like Google Ads, then I highly recommend using negative PPC keywords. Negative PPC keywords are keywords that will prevent your ad from triggering. By excluding specific words or phrases that aren’t relevant to your product or service, this will help you get the right traffic and reach the right prospects, so you’re not paying clicks for visitors who aren’t interested in your business. Negative keywords are great for optimising your budget and ensuring you get the right traffic to convert.

For example, if you sell professional, high performing bikes and you’re bidding on the word “bikes”, people who may be searching for children bikes, comfort bikes or even motorbikes will have the chances of coming across your PPC ad. Once they click on the ad, you’ll be charged, only for them to leave uninterested in your offer (because your product doesn’t meet their need). Remember your PPC campaigns are charged by click, so every click counts. Use negative keywords to prevent your ads from popping up.

9. “200% Revenue Boosting” – Try Remarketing

Do you recall seeing ads on the side of your browser or pop-up ads on Facebook and Instagram, of the shoes you searched for yesterday?

These ads don’t pop up by coincidence. These ads are retargeting ads – a form of online advertising that keeps a product or service at the forefront of a visitor’s mind after they’ve left the website.  

Retargeting is a very effective method of bringing back visitors who were once hesitant in buying a product or service. This form of advertising is not only provided on Google but also on social media like Facebook, Instagram etc. According to an Adobe study, retargeting can increase the click-through rate (CTR) by 400%, resulting in 200% increases in revenue from attracting traffic that has once visited your website lyfemarketing.com. This cost-effective and easy to implement strategy is automated and revenue-boosting.

10. Set a Budget For Your Advertising

Compared to organic posts, it’s so important to plan out your budget for paid advertising so you don’t overspend. Many small businesses disregard the importance of budgeting and consequently and ineffectively waste their resources on paid advertising that doesn’t give them the results. When it comes to budgeting, it’s imperative to decide on what objectives you want to achieve; either clicks, impressions or conversions. By knowing how much you want to spend on each ad, campaign, given week/ month, frequency or reach, you will have a clear idea on knowing exactly the costs you need to reach your intended audience.

Conclusion

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