Hero photograph
 

Online Advertising Campaigns

Stuart Dillon-Roberts —

To be successful with your advertising you can't just place an ad on the Internet and hope for the best.

A great way to improve your success is by implementing an online advertising campaign.  These allow you to target ads to reach different audiences and track your success so you can identify what worked and what didn't.

There are lots of options for Online Advertising Campaigns, but here we look at two common options - Facebook and YouTube.  We also have a quick look at Remarketing.

Facebook

Facebook is a great place to experiment with paid advertising without investing a lot of time and money. Facebook campaigns are less expensive than traditional media ads, and are easier to monitor than complex pay-per-click search engine marketing because they require less day-to-day modifications.  

With Facebook you can create ads targeted to different audiences (this means your ad is more likely to be relevant).  Your audience can be defined by categories such as location, age, the language they speak and interests.

There is lots of information on the Internet and in Facebook’s Help Center to guide you through the creation of a  Facebook Marketing Campaign but essentially you work through Facebook's core steps which involve defining the following: 

  • Campaign type – this is where you decide what to advertise. Are you directing people to your website, a Facebook page, promoting an event, or encouraging people to watch a video? What is it you want to achieve?
  • Advertising goal – the options you select here will be different depending on your campaign type, for example if you are driving people to a Facebook page you would select ‘Get More Likes’.
  • Designing your ad – Facebook ads consist of a 25 character headline and 90 character description and a thumbnail image. Although Facebook automatically suggests these its better if you spend the time rewriting them for your target markets (these can be updated in real-time if you need to make a change).
  • Targeting the ad – the ad should be targeted to your audience based on the parameters that Facebook provides.
  • Name, Pricing & Schedule – make sure the name is distinctive (this makes it easier to monitor later). Pricing can be either a daily budget or a lump sum and payment is on a pay-per-click or every time 1000 people see the ad.

Facebook has an Ads Manager tool and dashboard that will provide you with lots of information about how the campaign is going.  Don't forget to record core information on a spreadsheet so you can compare it over time and to different campaigns.

Did you know that Digital Journey lead the winning campaign on NZ's biggest social media competition.  How we did it was trying different ads on Facebook and checking which one received the most shares/likes.  Reviewing what worked allowed us to quickly determine the best campaigns to post.👏  

YouTube

YouTube advertising is very powerful as video is a terrific medium to entertain, educate and inspire.  YouTube videos are also great for sharing – how many memorable videos have you seen that have ‘gone viral’ 

People remember 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see and 70% of what they hear and see.😀

YouTube is actually the second largest search engine on the Internet which means videos get high rankings in Google search results.

One of the easiest and most cost effective ways to create a YouTube ad campaign is by using Google TrueView (also known as Adwords for Video). In TrueView there are 2 formats of video:

  • In-Display Ads – are displayed on the right side of screen while on YouTube pages or at the top of YouTube search results. - Because of this you should make sure your title and image are intriguing enough to get noticed.
  • Video Ads – are displayed before a YouTube video. Some of these ads will give the viewer the option to skip the ad after 5 seconds (ads can be up to 60 seconds), but others do not (15 seconds). If your ad can be skipped, remember you can still deliver a great ad in 5 seconds, while enticing the viewer to watch on.

Just like Facebook you can target your ad by categories like; location, gender, age, areas of interest, topics, keywords and phrases.

There is lots of information on the Internet and in Google AdWords Help Center to guide you through creating a YouTube campaign.

Remarketing (kind of scary but worth trying)

Remarketing is an important approach as it can help keep your brand in front of people after they leave your website. For most websites, only 2% of web traffic convert on the first visit. Remarketing is designed to help companies reach the 98% of users who don’t convert right away. The main point with remarketing is that you want to find those people who have shown enough interest in your organisation to visit our website. It can help build your brand. For example, if a potential customer visits your website and then as they continue browsing the Internet see ads for your organisation, they may perceive you are doing a lot of advertising and therefore must be a very successful organisation.

Im sure we have all witnessed this, you browse a website for say a new pair of shoes and then leave the site.  The next day you're on another website or even Facebook at the shoes reappear - magic!

Although remarketing helps increase conversions, its disadvantage is that it doesn’t drive new traffic to your website so it should be used in conjunction with other marketing campaigns. There are a number of tools that include remarketing functionality such as AdRoll and Google AdWords.

There is a lot of information and YouTube videos on the internet about how to create a remarketing campaign.

Track Your Success

Regardless of the campaign you decide on, it’s important to track your success.  Before you start you should know how you will measure what works and what doesn’t. It’s about finding out information such; as how many people consumed (viewed) your content, how many liked it, whether it generated any leads and whether content ‘consumers’ turned into customers.

Tracking metrics takes time and energy. So, you may decide not to track every social media post and every piece of content published. However you will probably want to track the success of a marketing campaign.  The key is to identify the metrics that are important to you, what you want to measure and how often.

Want to know more?

If you have any questions or need advice, you can get in touch with the Digital Journey team at 📧 hello@digitaljourney.org.