Digital advertising can be an incredibly powerful part of a marketing mix. Between its targeting capabilities, flexibility, low cost, and excellent return on investment, digital advertising is a no-brainer for companies operating in competitive market spaces.
At M&R Marketing, we’ve done a lot of digital advertising. Our designers, writers, and digital marketing experts have created thousands of digital ads promoting everything from financial services and statewide industry associations to candy stores and breweries. In that time, we can honestly say that no two digital ad campaigns have ever looked alike.
Some of our clients have taken a lighthearted, even funny, approach to their digital advertising. Some have leaned into the technical aspects of their offerings. Others use heartwarming emotional touches to make their pitch to the audience. Taking a random selection of ads from 50 different clients, you’ll see 50 very different styles.
That’s not to say, though, that there aren’t similarities. In this article, we’ll take a look at seven things that every single one of our most successful digital ad campaigns have had in common.
#1: Successful Digital Ad Campaigns Are Based on SMART Goals
In our 15+ years in marketing, we’ve seen a lot of digital ad campaigns, and we can say one thing unequivocally and without qualification: digital ad campaigns that aren’t built around meeting a specific goal fail 100% of the time. That’s partly because failure to build around a goal tends to make efforts less coordinated, poorly focused, and generally ineffective.
The other reason why campaigns without goals don’t succeed is because there’s no way to measure success. Without a specific goal, there’s nothing to measure progress towards, which means there’s no way to evaluate your marketing’s traction, function, or usefulness.
Successful digital ad campaigns are built with one or more SMART business goals in mind. SMART goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely
(Visit our Definitive Guide to Creating a Marketing Plan for a deeper dive into SMART goals.)
#2: Successful Digital Ad Campaigns Target a Specific Audience
If you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no one. Trying to craft a message and deliver a visual product that appeals to every single demographic and psychographic in the world is a flat impossibility. Trying to do so dilutes your efforts, defocuses your message, and ensures that you’re not effectively reaching any audience.
The real advantage of digital advertising is its ability to be laser targeted on a specific audience. If your product is only useful for a certain segment of the population, target your ads to only appear for those individuals. If your services are something anyone could use, identify one segment of your audience that is either underperforming, or that you’ve never targeted before, and target your ads on them. Don’t waste ad money advertising to low-yield or no-yield markets; make sure your campaign is focused specifically on your specific target markets.
#3: Successful Digital Ad Campaigns Are Distributed Across Multiple Platforms
There are several types of digital ads, all of which work together to put your brand in front of different users at different steps of their buyer’s journey:
Display ads appear as banners, columns, or other ads on millions of sites across the internet. If you’ve ever seen an ad for a tire shop while you were browsing your local newspaper’s website or seen a hotel ad pop up alongside the contents of the discussion board you’re reading, you’ve seen a display ad. Display ads are great for increasing brand awareness, launching new product/services, and promotions that are designed to bring in new business.
Search ads are the “Sponsored” links you see at the top of a Google search results page. Search ads show up in response to specific search strings or keywords, and businesses bid on keywords they’d like to appear for. Users who encounter a search ad are usually in the market for a specific product or service and are looking for more details on the various options available. Showing up high in search results for these users can be a very high-yield investment.
Shopping and Local Service ads are a specific type of sponsored link on a search results page, this time in the “Shopping” section or “Local Services” section that allows users to buy a product or service directly from the Google search page. Shopping and Local Service ads are some of the highest-return ads you can buy online, as the users who encounter these ads have typically settled on a particular item or service and are ready to buy as soon as they find the right company/price.
By utilizing all three advertising platforms, your digital advertising can almost literally shepherd your audience from brand awareness, through the shopping phase, and all the way to purchase.
#4: Successful Digital Ad Campaigns Feature Compelling Content & Visuals
Digital ads aren’t large. With only a small amount of screen space available to copywriters and designers, getting the maximum return out of a digital ad means wringing the maximum value out of every word and every pixel.
Digital ads must stand out, clearly state a business’s value proposition, and be compelling enough to convince audience members to stop what they’re doing and click through:
- Do your display ads feature quality photography that showcases your products and services or otherwise illustrates your value props?
- Is your ad copy punchy and direct? Does it include a specific call to action?
- Does your ad’s design reflect your brand’s visual identity? Does the copy sound like your brand’s voice?
If the answers to any of these questions is “no,” then it’s time to go back and re-evaluate your digital ads.
#5: Successful Digital Ad Campaigns Are Fully Integrated and Well Supported
Digital ads are kind of like football players: they don’t work alone. A digital ad in and of itself is only half of a digital ad campaign. Every ad in a digital campaign has to be integrated with and supported by some other digital marketing platform:
- A specific landing page designed to carry users who click on an ad through the buyer’s journey to conversion
- A page on the company’s website that features the product/service featured in the ad
- A social media page or specific social media post
- A YouTube video or other piece of digital content
Your digital ads must work together with these other digital pieces to create a seamless and effortless process for the customer from ad to detailed info to conversion.
#6: Successful Digital Ad Campaigns Are Closely Monitored
The first step of using digital ads, if you remember from the start of this article, is setting goals. As your digital ads start appearing on websites and in searches on computers and devices around the world, it’s important to track your progress towards those goals and evaluate what, if any, of your marketing efforts are helping you move the needle.
With digital ads, advertisers enjoy a level of detailed analytics and tracking that allow them to have incredible insight into their ads’ performance. For each ad, you’ll be able to see what types of users click on it, which ones are most likely to engage with your landing page or website, who’s likely to convert. You can compare different ads to find out which is engaging most effectively with your specific target markets, and have real-time information on how much progress you’re making towards your goals.
#7: Successful Digital Ad Campaigns Are Highly Flexible
The powerful analytics and reporting offered by digital advertising, when paired with how easy is it to create a digital ad and roll it out to the public means that your digital ad campaigns can be incredibly flexible. Trying out new techniques, running split and A/B tests, and regrouping when something isn’t moving the needle are all quick and easy to do when your campaign is flexible.
If one of your ads is underperforming, stop it at any time and put that money into an ad that’s meeting expectations. If a target of opportunity opens up, start a new ad to take advantage of it. If you recognize a shift in your target markets (ie, you don’t know why, but the metal thermos bottles you’ve been making for 50 years are suddenly hugely popular with moms aged 25-34), it’s easy to shift gears and adopt a campaign that better speaks to your active customer base.
Successful Digital Advertising That Really Moves the Needle
Designing a compelling ad is only part of it. Your digital ad campaigns require a strong, goal-focused strategy, engaging landing pages and web content, and tracking and reporting to measure the return on your investment. When you partner with M&R Marketing for your digital ad campaigns, you get all that and much more. We engage fully with your business to help you find the right audience, right message, and right strategy to make your company grow.
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