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Digital advertising is a pillar of effective marketing in our day and age. The aim of digital marketing is to showcase products and services to customers on the platforms they’re already using – and virtually no digital platform is used more frequently than social media. That said, in order to run effective digital ads, it’s critical to understand not only your audience, but what form of advertising and content works best on the digital platforms they prefer. For a quick rundown of how to run effective digital ads that’ll resonate with your audience, check out our top tips below.
Know Your Goals
Before designing any digital ad campaign, it’s important for everyone involved to understand the specific goals you’re hoping to achieve. This includes the product, plan, or service that’s being sold; the overall budget and minimum ROI you’re aiming for; and the number of clicks and conversions you’ll try to get, to name a few. Outlining what defines success and failure for your digital ads is the best way to make sure you’re able to identify victories and make pivots where necessary over the course of your campaign.
Understand Who You’re Targeting
Of course, you can’t effectively reach your target audience without understanding who the members of that audience are. In our competitive digital market, advertisements are everywhere, and it can be difficult to reach customers in an appealing, non-disruptive way. The key to doing this is knowing the pain points of your target audience and delivering advertisements that address these (or, at least, that take them into account). If your target audience is young and heavily involved with technology, ads with gimmicky wording won’t work as well as organic, conversational style content that fits in well with the rest of their timeline. Know your audience’s needs, and create content that’s compatible with them.
Know What Works Best on Each Platform
Each social platform has its own distinct purpose and usability, which means that ads that are optimal for once platform may not work as well on another. For example: while bright, lifestyle-oriented images perform well on Instagram, they might be less effective on Facebook, a platform whose users generally prefer video. That said, a 30-second video ad that gets high engagement on Facebook might be easily skipped over on Youtube, a platform where video advertisements only have five seconds to grab audiences’ attention before being closed out.
The point is this: it’s critical to tweak your digital ad strategy to each unique social channel you’ll be using. This will allow your ads to fit in organically with the content that does best on each platform, allowing your messages to reach your target audience in an effective and unintrusive way.
Being able to run effective digital ads starts with understanding your audience as well as the digital platforms they use. By optimizing your messaging for your audience and your advertising format for each social platform, you’ll be well-positioned to distribute high-performing ads that attract customers. To get more pointers about creating an effective digital marketing strategy that brings in more customers, contact us.