Importance of Ad Campaigns - What Works Out The Best and Why

Intro

After you start your business, you might see an initial sales boom from family, friends, and community members who are eager to support your entrepreneurial venture. But as that natural momentum peters off, what will you do?

Before you start panicking that your business idea is unsustainable or that you need to modify your product, consider this: There could be a whole bevy of potential customers waiting in the wings for you, ready to make their purchases. It’s just that they don’t know you exist yet.

So, how do you announce yourself to the masses and uncover hidden customers? The answer to that is an advertising campaign.

But not all ad campaigns are created equal. As the times change, customers do too, so what worked in the past might not work today. That’s why businesses have to be smart about their ad campaigns to get the most customers with the littlest effort.

If you’re a new business owner or marketer thinking about running an ad campaign, rest assured – we’ll provide you with the inside scoop on the best three types of ad campaigns, and how you can leverage them to bolster your bottom line.

Why are ad campaigns important?

First off, why are ad campaigns important?

To put it simply, ad campaigns boost your brand’s visibility, encouraging curious viewers to check out your business. The more publicity you have, the more market awareness you’ll develop in the minds of your target audience. And the more people who are aware of your brand, the more likely they are to think of your brand when they need your product or service. That means more customers for you!

But that doesn’t mean you should simply start running ads anywhere and everywhere: your ad campaigns help establish your brand reputation and sales channels.

For example, if you choose to run ads on Instagram, you’d be seen as more modern and hip with the kids, and you’d see more traffic to your online store. On the other hand, if you chose to run a local print ad campaign, you’d be seen as more old-fashioned, and you’d see more traffic to your phone lines. So it’s important to choose an ad campaign that matches your long-term brand and sales goals.

What are some key factors to think about when planning an ad campaign?

When planning an ad campaign, there are five key factors that you should consider, corresponding to four W’s and one H: who, what, when, where, and how. Let’s go through each of these questions one by one.

Your target audience

Who you’re selling to (in other words, your target audience) is likely the most important factor of your ad campaign.

Which communication platform is best for reaching them? What sort of content do they want to see? Do your due market research into your target audience’s preferences to ensure that you’re catering directly to their needs.

Content strategy

What sort of content can your marketers create, and what sort of appeals will you use within them?

Though rich media such as video and images are generally the most effective, you should consider if your marketers can handle the strain of producing so many new, unique, and high-quality videos and images for the duration of your campaign. If your marketers can’t keep up, you might choose to outsource content production to a marketing agency instead.

Inside your content, consider whether you’ll appeal to emotions, social pressure, or logical reasoning. This will depend on where in the customer journey your viewers will be seeing your ad.

In general, emotional and social-based ads are more effective at the beginning of the customer journey to draw customers in through gut feelings, while longer, logical content is more effective at the end of the customer journey as the customer rationalizes a purchase decision.

Campaign duration

When are you going to start and stop your ad campaign? Timing is important, especially if you want to make the most out of seasonal trends such as holiday shopping.

Additionally, once a consumer has seen an ad, they won’t as enthusiastic about it the next time. In other words, your goal is to run your ad campaign only as long as it takes for each potential customer to see the ad once. Any more, and you’d be beating a dead horse and wasting money. A short and sweet campaign is best.

Your goals

Where will you advertise in order to achieve your short- and long-term goals? Though your ultimate goal is to increase your number of customers, different advertising channels and methods lend themselves to different actions and results.

For example, some channel and goal matchups could be to:

• Boost visibility and brand awareness through banner ads and guest posts
• Encourage calls to action through clicks on email and social media
• Improve foot traffic through local SEO

Cost

How much are you willing to pay per click or per customer? This will determine your ad campaign’s budget.

Before you get too worried about the price, know that ad campaigns don’t necessarily have to break the bank. Though printed ads and paid online ad campaigns may cost a pretty penny, you could find success through organic digital ad campaigns instead, which are entirely free.

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The three best types of ad campaigns

Once you’ve got a good sense of your goals and capabilities for an ad campaign, here are the three overall best types of ad campaigns you can look at and customize to your business needs.

Email campaign

Email is the king of advertising, and for good reason: it’s affordable, wide-reaching, and convenient to both send and receive.

Not only can you send one-to-many emails to an email list, but you can also send emails on a one-to-one basis if you’ve honed in on a specific sales prospect. This means that nearly any business in any industry can use email marketing.

It’s no wonder that when small- and medium-sized businesses were asked for the most effective digital marketing channel for driving sales, email marketing won by a landslide, being used by 36% of respondents – double that of the runner-up!

Though we’ll give you some of the best three email marketing tips right here and now, if you’re really serious about your email campaign, it’d be best to visit Making That Sale to get the full details on how to write and send out truly stellar emails.

Get a good subject line

Our first tip is to increase your open rate by upping your subject line game. Your subject line determines if recipients will open your email or send it straight to the trash can, so you’d do well to have one that catches your recipient’s attention and entices them to open the email.

A good trick for this is to use the recipient’s name – according to Backlinko, personalized subject lines such as these boost response rates by over 30%.

For example, rather than

“New 20% spring savings!”

It’d be better to write:

“John, don’t miss out on these 20% savings!”

Make emails mobile-friendly

Then, make your emails friendly for viewing on mobile devices. A 2021 HubSpot study revealed that at 41% of email views, mobile is the top method people choose to view their emails from, barely squeaking ahead of desktop users.

To help people read your emails on the go, be sure to test that your email content, formatting, and layout all display properly when viewed on mobile devices.

(Source: HubSpot)

Send follow-up emails

If you didn’t get a response after the initial email, it’s not the end of the road. Though your initial email might have caught them at a bad time, a follow-up email could be the second chance you need for success. Sending even one follow-up could lead to twice the number of responses, according to Backlinko.

In your follow-up, try to say more than “Just checking in.” If your initial appeal or call to action didn’t resonate with the reader, the follow-up is your chance to shift gears and make a second appeal, or provide additional information on what you’re offering.

Try to avoid spamming people, though – if you don’t get a response after two or three follow-up emails, that’s your cue to back away respectfully and try your luck elsewhere.

Social media campaign

Our next type of ad campaign is the illustrious social media campaign. Almost 5 billion people use social media, so running an ad campaign on social media is sure to boost your visibility.

Based on your cost considerations and marketing team capacity, you should determine whether to run an organic social media campaign, or become an affiliate of the platform and pay for advertising reach. Once you do, here are three tips to help you leverage your social media to its fullest extent.

Pick the right platform

Just like how it’s important to pick the best advertising channel for your target audience, should you choose to run a social media campaign, it’s equally important to choose the social media platform that has the largest population of your target audience.

If you’re simply going for overall visibility, the five most popular social media platforms in 2023 are Facebook, Youtube, and WhatsApp, Instagram, and WeChat. But if you’re looking to target specific age groups, Instagram, Snapchat, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok will be more popular for younger audiences, while Facebook and YouTube will have more pull for older audiences.

(Source: Forbes)

Use the right media

You might think that the richest of media—video, audio, and interactive— is best. After all, if it stimulates more senses, it will make a stronger impact, right?

However, a 2023 HubSpot report revealed that the social media content types with the highest ROI are actually video, images, and blog posts. So there’s no need to break the bank on fancy media – beyond videos, simple yet high-quality images and text will do just as well.

Partner with an influencer

A sad truth is that with so many disingenuous companies running around, consumers no longer trust business promotions point-blank. That’s why consumers place so much stock into social proof – in other words, relying on and trusting the opinions of other consumers to help guide their purchase.

That’s why you should consider partnering with an influencer to get a referral from someone your target audience trusts, making a stronger impression and reaching more people.

SEO campaign

Our last type of ad campaign is an SEO campaign, which means taking steps to increase your ranking and visibility when people search for businesses and products in search engines. By increasing your SEO ranking, you’ll hopefully see an influx of website traffic, where visitors might be enticed into making a purchase.

In some cases, it might be worth it to partner with the search engine itself to boost your ranking. For example, as the de facto search engine, paying for Google Ads would definitely be worth it. But if you want to organically raise your SEO ad campaign game, here are three tips to get you to the first page.

Use the right keywords

Just like fish to bait, keywords attract your target audience right to your website. That’s why it’s important to research which keywords are best for your industry and business using a keyword finder tool, such as Ranktracker’s.

(Source: Ranktracker)

Don’t overstuff your content

Once you’ve sourced a good list of keywords, the next step is to choose a good combination keywords and disperse them naturally in your content. When deciding how many keywords to use for SEO, less is more – it’s recommended to use only one or two keywords per 100 words of copy. Any more and you risk getting flagged for trying to game the SEO algorithm.

To help with that we’d recommend using more long-tail keywords (three or more words), which flow more naturally in the content, add more variety, and help you hone in on your specific niche and location.

For example, rather than “coffee,” it’d be better to use “best Dallas homebrew coffee” on your website to appeal directly to coffee connoisseurs in the Dallas area.

Linkbuild

Our final tip is to spend some time linkbuilding, which is where you get other websites to link to your own website. This tells the search engine that your website is seen as an authority by others, boosting your SEO ranking.

Rather than attempting to solicit links from any old website, it’s best to partner with related sites in the same industry so you can reach an audience relevant to your own. You may also consider exchanging links, so both parties can benefit.

Closing Thoughts

Ad campaigns are a great way to bolster your sales funnel, visibility, and brand image, attracting more potential customers to your business. But there are a lot of different factors that go into crafting the perfect ad campaign. By duly weighing these factors, you can lock in on the best ad campaign strategy for you, and find customers hidden right under your nose.