Online Advertising Essentials: A Campaign Checklist

 In Marketing Guides

Are you interested in test driving online advertising for your business or workplace but perhaps aren’t sure where to start, or want the ability to run smaller campaigns between your agency’s activity? The below process can help you to get started with online advertising, whether it’s paid search, display, retargeting or social media and help you to target and use budget more efficiently.

Knowing Your Ideal Customer

For appropriately targeted online advertising which generates a strong return on ad spend, your first step is to research. Using a number of trusted tools such as sales data, Google Analytics, search data, surveys, real-time trends and selective research, we recommend determining who your ideal customer is using:

  • Demographic and Geographic research: age, gender, income, location
  • Psychographic research: interests, habits, attitudes, preferences and motivations
  • Behaviour research: platforms, devices and online destinations where most time is spent

 

Get Better Acquainted With the Competition

Researching your competition – what they do well, badly and potentially their share of the market – is a critical preparation step when undertaking online advertising. If you aren’t up to speed on competitor activity your campaign could fall flat. We advise spending time delving into the competition:

  • Why do customers use the competition and in turn, yourself? What benefits do customers get from your products or services and is this different from others in the landscape?
  • Conduct an analysis and price point review of your competition focusing on everything from brand, key messaging, features and USPs. This will uncover the pros and cons of your own business and help guide improvements or necessary alignment pre-campaign
  • Use this information to develop your brand’s unique selling proposition and the campaign value proposition, language, key messaging and positioning. Stand out and make the desired impact!

 

Understand Motivations at Each Stage of the Funnel

The funnel represents your ideal customer’s thoughts, motivations and behaviour in relation to a sale for your company. Most marketers agree that it can be split into three stages:

  • Top of the funnel: high volume audiences with low intent to engage or buy. This segment of the funnel is a great place to draw new prospects from
  • Middle of the funnel: data in this segment of the funnel is technically a prospect or at least a strong suspect. Utilise targeted content (personalised if possible) to develop brand engagement and strengthen your proposition
  • Bottom of the funnel: what’s commonly known as “high volume, high opportunity”. Data here is on the path to purchase, so do all you can to direct them to a relevant, specific call to action. At this point, metrics should tell us a decent amount about bottom of the funnel data so keywords and commercials can be worked into advertising

Seeing how the three stages vary, we’re sure it goes without saying that strategy and communications will need to be tailored accordingly.

 

Measurement and Metrics

So you’ve undertaken a comprehensive planning process. But before building your campaign on an online advertising platform, you’ll need to set a specific goal. Depending on objectives, this could be anything from brand awareness, lead conversion, traffic increases or sales. You campaign goal will determine return on investment looks like so set it early on to avoid incorrect conclusions being drawn from metrics.

Our advisable metrics to measure, of which significance will vary depending on your goals, are:

  • Impressions and clicks
  • Audience volume
  • Page behaviour
  • Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
  • Click Through Rate (CTR)
  • Cost Per Conversion (CPC)
  • Overall conversion rate
  • Quality score
  • Bounce rate
  • Search impression share
  • Demographics
  • Return on Ad Spend (RoAS)

Does your business want to use online advertising as part of a strong marketing mix for growth but you’re unsure where to start? Then OSBOS would love to hear from you. We specialise in B2B marketing for SMEs and support clients with entering new markets and growing their market share through online advertising.

Just call + 44 (0) 1606 822606 or email  to get in touch. We service clients across locations including Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Birmingham from our Gadbrook Park, Northwich offices with low-risk, scalable outsourced marketing. Our online advertising services allow businesses to plug us in when required, helping to power your growth

 

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