HOW TO ANALYSE AND OPTIMISE YOUR DISPLAY ADS FOR SUCCESS

Display ads have come a long way since their first appearance on Wired magazine’s website hotwired.com in 1994. That little rectangular ad sponsored by AT&T to promote seven art museums, earned the publisher revenue worth billions of dollars.

If you encounter a flashy ad (in unsightly tie-dye text) like that on a website today, you will probably chuckle at the terrible attempt made by the publisher to get your click. As a user, you will ignore it and as a marketer you may want to show it to your marketing team as an example of what to strictly avoid when creating an ad.

Display advertising has seen dramatic shifts over the decades. Today display ads appear in different forms – from static images and videos to animations and interactive applications. Regardless of the ad format used, display ads can help to boost brand awareness, bring in more traffic and increase your ROI when done wisely.

Unfortunately, even with that much of potential, display advertising fail to deliver great results for many companies. All too often we see business owners losing money and time on their expensive ad campaigns and picking holes in display advertising as a marketing technique while the truth is they have been making simple and avoidable mistakes all along.

SO WHY EXACTLY SOME DISPLAY ADS FAIL?

• You are targeting the wrong audience
• Your ad does not have a clear, focused and consistent message
• You are running your ads at the wrong time
• You are using misleading CTAs (clickbait)
• You are not using right keyword matches
• Your ad placements are not specific enough
• You forgot to A/B test your ad
• You are not working with an experienced and creative advertising partner

There are many other things marketers do or overlook which takes a toll on their ad campaign. Setting up display advertising campaigns and leaving them to run will not get you the traffic and conversions you may be expecting of your ads, but optimisation will.

The key to successful and cost-effective display advertising is optimisation and constant monitoring, which brings us to our next aspect….

BEST PRACTICES FOR OPTIMISING LIVE DISPLAY ADS

• Track Conversion Performance

It is important to track the conversion rate of your campaign while it is running as well as when at the end of the campaign. Unless you have conversion tracking enabled, you will not be able to see how many of the clicks on your ad are actually resulting in sales. With the data generated through conversion

tracking, you can easily identify areas of your campaign that are working well and those that need improvement.

• Improve Your Placements

Google wants to get you impressions – like a whole lot. But it does not care about whether or not those impressions turn into paying customers. Even building a relevant topic or interest will not make sure that your ads will appear on the relevant sites or in front of the right people. In fact, if you have been using topic or interest targeting, you will be surprised to see the amount and sort of sites your ads show up in. You must regularly check your automatic placements and exclude poor performing sites and sites that do not relate to your business.

• Adjust Reach and Frequency

Reach and frequency information under the Dimensions section of Google Ads can help in optimising the performance of your ad campaign. You can change the “Frequency Capping” to limit the maximum number of times your ad is shown to users to reduce the annoyance and budget waste.

KPIs FOR MEASURING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR DISPLAY ADS

Impressions: This metric represents the number of times your ad appears on a web page or simply a record of views. The bigger the number, the wider the reach of your ad.

Reach: A bit similar to impressions, it is a measure of the number of people who see your ad, not just the number of views. Keeping a tab on this metric will make sure you do not waste your time or money by showing your ads to the same person.

Engagement:

As the name suggests, this metric represents the percentage of people who have interacted with your display ad. A higher percentage of engagement associates with higher conversion rates. You can use this data to determine if your ad is creative enough to capture users’ attention.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

This is the percentage of people who actually click on your ad after seeing it. A low CTR might mean you need to rethink your display advertising strategy. Even changing the ad’ copy to be more captivating can make a difference.

THE CONCLUSION

Consistently optimising and analysing the performance of your display ads is inevitable to make sure you are getting the most out of your time, resources and marketing budget.
If you lack in-house expertise or experience, get in touch with a professional display advertising agency in Australia that can provide you with valuable advice and technical assistance at every step of the way.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN YOUR COMPETITOR’S PPC STRATEGIES

There is a good chance that many PPC advertisers fail to see significant results even with proven strategies in place because they completely overlook their competitive research.

Constantly keeping a tab on your competitors’ PPC activity and progress can help you tailor your own advertising strategies to create a competitive edge.

Here are a few key aspects you need to keep your eye on for your competitive research to be fruitful.

KEYWORDS

If you are running PPC ads, you may already have a bunch of keywords in hand that are driving good results. But there is still a chance that your competitors are using some high-potential phrases that you may have missed out on.

Using robust competitive keyword research tools, you can discover terms that are bringing the most value to your competitors and determine how much each keyword is costing them. Broaden your research to look through organic data and find out competitor keywords with low search volume. Since these keywords have low search volume, they can become grounds for your growth when used wisely in the long run.

PAID ADS

Turns out your closest competitor might already be using your keywords to advertise, and you will have no idea of this until you start tracking their ad campaigns. When planning your PPC campaign, it is a good idea to keep an eye on the competitor’s ads and determine what keywords they are using most frequently and during which months.

The Ad History report in the Google Keyword Analytics section provides you enough data insights to be able to analyse the performance of specific keywords used by your competitors in their previous ads. With an understanding of seasonal fluctuation in paid ads and cost and impact of particular keywords in your niche, you can use your rivals’ experience to keep potential mistakes to a minimum and maximise your advertising potential for best results.

ORGANIC SEARCH

You may incur a situation where your business is ranking high in a certain organic search, which makes you wonder if you should run paid ads for that keyword. Analysing your competitor’ organic and paid search efforts can help your decision. Find out if they are paying to advertise on terms that are already ranking high on the first page of search results. If you find any such keywords, determine what tactics the advertisers are using to rank for those keywords as well as loose ends in their PPC strategy. Learning from the mistakes and strengths of other advertisers in your niche will allow you to create a result-oriented approach to make the most out of your PPC effort and outrun your competitors.

Mobile Vs. Desktop Targeting

With people switching between mobile and desktop devices, it is important to see what works and what does not work for your competitors in paid search. Note that keywords you use to appeal to mobile users may not be as effective in targeting desktop users. Do extensive research to find out what keywords are performing well on particular devices for your competition and then implement the same strategy or a new one to get the most value out of those keywords.

Moreover, the type of industry you are in will help decide which device you will need to target more frequently. For example, merchants selling clothes online may expect traffic from mobile devices while a software business can benefit more from desktop advertising. Track your top-performing competitors and see what strategies they are using to target audience on different devices. Use this information to tailor ads that perfectly appeal to your target audiences.

To sum up…

The paid advertising competition is ever increasing. You may have an effective advertising strategy in place that is performing to meet your current goals, but it will still pay off to analyse your competition based on the abovementioned factors and more.

If you lack in-house resources that can help you with competitor analysis, it is advised to work with a professional firm that specialises in PPC advertising in Australia. Using advanced analysis tools, a PPC specialist can provide you with detailed insights into what your highest-performing competitors are doing and are likely to do in the future which will help you adjust your PPC campaigns for maximum output.

5 TIPS TO GET YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING GAME ON FLEEK

It’s easy for small businesses to think they can reach their audience through traditional marketing methods. While traditional marketing is not completely dead, digital marketing has become an inevitable part of modern-day marketing for most businesses.
With over 4 billion internet users across the globe and more than 3.4 billion active social media users, marketers must utilise digital marketing methods to reach a larger audience than they could through traditional methods alone and stay ahead of the competition.

This blog presents you with a list of digital marketing tips that will help optimise your marketing strategy and spending to get the results you are looking for.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT MIX OF MARKETING TECHNIQUES

A common mistake that most rookie marketers make is – trying to implement marketing strategies across all digital platforms at once. Though there is a multitude of techniques you can leverage to market your business on the internet including pay per click advertising, SEO and email marketing, not all of them are going to work well for your goals and budget.

When you are starting out, you must create a smart mix of different digital marketing methods that can produce the maximum impact. Once you determine the digital techniques you need to focus on, be consistent with your marketing efforts.

MAKE YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION OBVIOUS

A lot of companies lose potential customers and sales while wasting their time focusing on themselves. People do not just buy things; they buy solutions to solve their problems. Most customers do not care about your company or brand, but about how your products can make their lives better. And that is why your value proposition should reflect in all your digital communications and content.

Your value proposition should clearly highlight the value buyers will receive by investing in whatever you are selling and reasons why they should buy it from you and not your competitors.

BE HONEST IN YOUR SALES COPY

This may sound obvious, but it is not common. It is surprising how so many marketers make promises their products cannot live up to, in an attempt to look tempting and encourage people to buy. Making claims that you cannot substantiate will not only hurt your business’s reputation, but also discourage trust in your brand. So be straightforward, specific and clear in your sales copy, be it personalised email campaigns or your website’s homepage.

Besides your digital content and communications, being honest is also important when you position yourself as a business on the web. You do not want to appear as something you are not, in front of your potential customers. Presenting false or inappropriate information about your products or brand will only take a toll on your brand’s credibility.

DETERMINE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

To effectively market to your customers, it is important to first understand who they are. After all, how would you be able to create content without knowing who you are creating it for?

Successful digital marketing takes time and you do not want to waste it developing content that does not relate to your audience. So, to create a clear picture of who you are referring to in your web copy, you must find out who your target audience is.

To define your target audience, you will need to answer a few questions including:

Who are our current customers and why do they buy from us?
What problems does our product or service solve?
Which age group and gender is most likely to buy from us?
Who is our competition?

In case you already have a customer base, find out what they like and dislike about your products or brand. This will help you build a powerful digital marketing strategy and drive better conversions.

LEVERAGE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK AND TESTIMONIALS

In today’s socially influenced era, recommendations from friends and family have a huge impact and can persuade even the most cautious consumer to shop. This means that your satisfied customers can provide you with one of the most valuable assets for your digital marketing – testimonials.

A group of happy customers can be more influential than even the best-written sales copy, so be sure to reach out to the bunch of loyal customers you have and encourage them to gush about how helpful your product/service is. Posting their testimonials on your website, social media pages, landing pages, products pages and sales copy will inspire a sense of credibility in your potential customers.

THE TAKEAWAY

While implementing these tips will sure boost your marketing efforts, these are not the only things you want to pay attention to. The digital marketing landscape is vast – the best way to get ahead of your competition is to avoid mistakes they are making, and leverage tried and tested techniques.

If you are just starting out, it is advised to work with a professional digital marketing agency. With extensive field-knowledge and experience, an expert can use their digital marketing services to provide you a bigger picture of your competition, audience and goals.

THE POWER OF DIGITAL MARKETING AMIDST COVID-19 CRISIS

Forbes madethe heavy-handed claim in a recent article that a company’s digital marketing strategies will decideif they would make it through the tough times ahead.

That’s quite a statement.

It goes without saying that this is by far one of the toughest times most marketers and content creators will ever face in their careers. But evenin thesedifficult times, it is believed that digital marketing might take a huge leap forward as a result of COVID-19 crisis and give businesses great opportunities to improve things for the better. After all, every cloud has a silver lining andso does this pandemic.

The outbreak of this vicious virus has generated a lot of unforeseen outcomes that people have never experienced before. That said, it has been noticed that people are now spending more time on screens, thus changing the way we use digital platforms and the way we create digital connections.

COVID-19 has made it clear that companies will most essentially need a digital marketing agency in order to survive

Get to know the reasons why digital marketing is the strategic raft you need to navigate this ongoing pandemic.

EVERYONE’S DEPENDENCY ON THE DIGITAL SCREEN INCREASES NOW

The average adult spends most of their regular hours in front of digital screens. This slight upward trend in screen time in recent years can partly be attributed to the growing accessibility to technology and the widespread adoption of connected smart devices.

With the onset of self-isolation due to the coronavirus, daily screen time has only increased rapidly.

All eyes are on the digital platform
The first thing to fall off during such a pandemic is traditional print media.It’s a harsh truth but dozens of Australian newspapers stopped printing as the crisis hit the publishing sector. Hence, everyone’s reliability on digital platforms significantly increased.

When everyone is forced to self-quarantine themselves at home, their ears and eyes are also isolating from the outside world. Therefore, the ad you publish on newspaper or on billboards won’treach people.

But that’s not the case with digital ads; if you work with a reputed agency to implement a robust digital marketing strategy, you can help your business grow and sustain even in this pandemic.

Social media usage is tremendously rising amidst COVID-19

Everyone is spending an excessive amount of time on social media to kill time during this quarantine period. This means now thatcustomers can’t frequently walk in to their regular brick-and-mortar stores, their attention toward online shopping will rise.

A recent study found that there is a76% increase in daily likes on Instagram ad posts. So, make the best use of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, even LinkedIn to run ads or post jobs that could help your business drive revenue and keep running smoothly.

If your hired digital agency isn’t making the best use of social media channels now, it’s never too late toask them to start practising it.

WITH SOCIAL DISTANCING, COMPANIES CAN NO LONGER COUNT ON TRADITIONAL EVENTS

As Tokyo Olympics are postponed for the first non-war time period in the world history, it’s been clear that no such big gathering events will take place for quite sometime. Instead, we can see more of digital events utilising resources like Zoom and Google Hangouts.

These online platforms are literally sustaining the economy from falling apart as more than half of the world is proceeding to work from home and are conducting sales meetings and virtual conferences digitally.

In fact, companies that are thinking on their toes are already moving live events online. And that’s all because they have essential data and analytics available to them including:

• Email listings
• Nurtured leads
• Linked opportunities
• Converse rate optimisation data, and so much more.

WHEN CRISIS STRIKES, DIGITAL MARKETING REACTS TACTFULLY

The next in the list that has gained attention due to this pandemic is the importance of adaptable marketing strategies.

With a proper plan in place, not onlydo digital experts have the resources to tweak their campaigns from the comfort of their laptop or smart devices, but they can also do everything immediately without taking much time. 

This is certainly the competitive advantage every business needswhen dealing with dreadful economic crisis.

The best part is digital marketers have prepared themselves in the tech ad space for years.

Besides, when people opt for online shopping rather than going to brick and mortar stores, you need digital help on your side to market your business.

To wrap up this blog, note that whether it’s a pandemic situation or any regular time, ecommerce and digital marketing are the future.They are going to influence most of the population in coming years.

So, wait no longer andwork with a digital marketing firm to build a robust online marketing strategy for your business.

The Power of Facebook Advertising in 2020

Many of youmay have wondered the effectiveness of Facebook ads while watching them in your news feed at some point. Well, they actually work. In fact, if implemented properly, they can benefit business ownerswitha massive return on investment.

Fortunately, advertising on Facebook is available in many formats to businesses and can be as simple or as sophisticated as you want. Due to its wide reach, businesses have the power to market to two billion people on Facebook every month.

So, it’s not just SEO, organic social media, flawless web design andemail marketing that’s going to help your business succeed online, Facebook ads matter a lot. Running your ads on Facebook, a platform that is actively used by billions of people everyday,increases your chances of reaching a wider audience.

If the benefits of Facebook ads are still not clear to you, let’s dive into the insightful information on why you need to invest in them, especially in the year 2020, which is apparently a difficult time to be a marketer and/or business owner.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT IS HUGE

Let’s start with the facts.

80% of all Internet users access Facebook. Even 65% of adults over the age of 65 spend most of their time on Facebook rather than other social media platforms.

Hence, it’s clear from the data that Facebook has quite a large user base that frequently checksFacebook multiple times per day. Therefore, investing in a Facebook campaign helps you to effectively advertise your brand and business to your target and global audience.

MOST TARGETED FORM OF ADVERTISING

Facebook’s targeting capabilities when it comes to the level of reaching wider audience are beyond amazing. You can target audience by their interests, age, location, behaviour or language and prevent spending your budget on users who don’t fall into your target market.

The audience quality matters more than the audience size. By targeting your audience with your ads, you can likely connect with your potential customers who are willing to invest in your service than just being a visitor.

FACEBOOK ADS ARE BUDGET-FRIENDLY

In comparison to traditional marketing methods, Facebook ads are considered reasonable which makesthem a perfect choice for start-ups. You merely have to spend $5 to $8 to reach a 1000 people, which is quite fair as you might have to pay around $50 for radio ads, billboards, TV commercial or other traditional media to show your business to the same amount of people.

THE AUDIENCE REACH IS WIDER THAN ORGANIC POSTS

Gone are the days of organic Facebook marketing.If you run a business page, you would be surprised to learn that only the smallest fraction of your followers even sees what you post. It may sound absurd, but it’s true.

This is becauseover the last few years, Facebook has changed its business algorithm for marketerseverywhere, resulting in decreased visibility of business pages innews feed.

It was confirmed by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, that the platform would be prioritising posts from friends and family more frequently, taking a toll on the visibility and marketing efforts of business pages.

So, if you plan touse Facebook for marketing, the best bet is toinvest inFacebook ads to spread awareness aboutyour business amidst your customers.

REMARKETING TO WEBSITE VISITORS BECOMES EASY

Have your ever visited an eCommerce site and started seeing their ads shortly after while scrolling through your Facebook feed and wondering how that happened?

That’s remarketing.

Remarketing allows you toconnect with recent website visitors. This means, if someone visits your website and leaves without any engagement or purchase, you can re-engage them with Facebook marketing.

Not all first-timer visitors would turn into customers unless they find your business reliable, even if you happen tocatchtheir interest for a little while.

Also, one touchpoint isn’t going to help make a big difference in your sales. But if a visitor sees your ad frequently, there would be higher chances of them recognising your brand andinvesting in your product/service.  

EASILY FIND NEW LEADS

Once you are able tofind the audience that converts, you caneasily attract people who are just like your audience by using Facebook’s “lookalike audiences”.

The feature allows you to take a custom audience and use the platform to find people who are most likely to buy your service.

Wrapping Up…

Just because Facebook advertising doesn’t cost you a fortune, doesn’t mean it compromises with results in any way. When implemented effectively with the help of a professional team, it can open up several sales and revenue opportunities for your business.

Also, note that no Facebook advertising service will provide you the desired results overnight. In business, it doesn’t work like that. However, if you dedicatedly learn the right technique and approach with the help of Facebook marketing experts, you will certainly make the most of your investment.