Hello!
Got sweaty palms every time you think about advertising your business? We don’t blame you. From managing ad budgets to nailing your sales copy to catering to prospects at various funnel stages, there’s a lot to do and keep up with.
And you want to know the hard truth?
Ad campaigns can be a complete waste of time and money if you don’t have a solid marketing system in place. Not only do your ads and landing pages need to be 100% tailored to your customer base, but integrating other marketing channels is crucial to building a foundation your campaigns won’t crumble under.
If you’re ready to set your campaigns up for success, read on for nine advertising tips you don’t want to miss.
1. Optimize your landing pages
Getting potential customers to click on your ad is one thing. Getting them to stay on your landing page and take the specific action you’d like them to, is a completely different story.
That’s why you can’t overlook the importance of an optimized landing page.
To organize this step, we’ve put together a checklist you can use any time you need to craft a landing page:
Landing Page Optimization Checklist
- Use a responsive template (this is key to making sure your landing page loads correctly on all devices and screens).
- Target your landing page copy, images, and call to action (CTA) to your audience — highlight a top pain point and explain/show how your offer solves it better than anything else can.
- Ensure your landing page copy aligns with ad messaging so that visitors don’t get confused about where they’ve ended up. Use long-tail keywords which can help with SEO.
- Include a clear CTA with a fast and easy process (e.g., a CTA button “Download your ebook here!” leads to a form with just three fields: A field for their first name, last name, and email address. After filling out the form, the ebook immediately downloads).
- Brand your landing page with your colors, graphics, fonts, and company logo.
- Include social proof elements, such as “as seen in Forbes“ or, “we’ve helped over 10,000 project managers save 12+ hours a week”.
- Explain and show your audience what they’re getting by including a captivating image, video, or teaser, and a written description.
- Explain the top benefits of using your offer, buying your product, or getting the results you promise.
Need a visual example? The following landing page on how to get free Instagram followers ticks all of the boxes. Literally.
2. Integrate irresistible lead magnets for ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu leads
Cater to all of your audience segments by creating irresistible lead magnets for top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) prospects, middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu) leads, and bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) prospects. Note: If you serve widely different market segments, you might have ToFU, MoFu, and BoFu prospects in each audience group.
To take advantage of this tip, create an ad with a specific lead magnet for ToFu prospects, a second for MoFu leads, and a third for BoFu prospects.
For instance, the following guide on how to find potential buyers for your business could be an excellent lead magnet for MoFu prospects who’re on the fence about selling their businesses.
This particular target market needs a ton of information to help ease their fears and doubts about parting ways with the empire they worked so hard to build.
By providing them with all of the details, a guide like this can empower entrepreneurs with the data they need to make informed decisions about selling their companies. This can help nudge them down into the BoFu.
Let’s take a look at another example.
The following WordPress ADA compliance CTA could work great as a lead magnet for BoFu prospects that are ready to buy — but you need to make sure the specific product works for them, first.
In this case, the BoFu prospect could start with an audit (as shown above) to see if their site is WCAG and ADA-compliant. Immediately after the audit, the page could auto-populate an offer to sign up for a demo and another offer to sign up for a free WordPress ADA compliance plugin trial.
From here, BoFu prospects can decide if they need more hands-on training or if they’re ready to try the plugin out before subscribing to a plan.
As for ToFu prospects? These leads are just scraping the surface and tend to need more nurturing to move through the funnel stages.
Simple lead magnets work well for this group, as they’re usually not too far down the research rabbit hole at this point — think of cheat sheets, toolkits, scripts, templates, and checklists. For instance: The checklist we created in Tip 1 would work great as a ToFu lead magnet.
3. Repurpose your high-performing seasonal content as seasonal ads
Take advantage of seasonal SEO brownie points by repurposing your high-performing seasonal content as ads.
Simply Google the top seasonal phrases you’re targeting to see how your content is ranking or use an SEO research tool.
This signifies that the piece is valuable to searchers. Hers could repurpose it as an ad to shed light on its Minoxidil treatment options for women. It could also A/B test this ad and change the offer variable to see which hair loss treatment option its target audience is most interested in.
For instance, it could showcase its Minoxidil treatment in one ad, its Spironolactone medication in a second, and its Finasteride hair loss spray in a third. (More on A/B testing in a bit.)
Pro-Tip: Automate the SERP research process by using Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker. If you set up a project for your website, the tool will track your site’s ranking positions for the keywords you’ve added. This will give you a quick overview of the seasonal content that’s ranking best so you can repurpose it in your ads. You can also repurpose non-seasonal content that’s ranking high in your ads.
4. Use social media as part of your campaigns
Supplement your ad campaigns by generating free buzz around the offers you’re marketing.
Spread the word for free by sharing your offer in stories, live streams, carousel posts, static images, and videos. Make it easy for interested buyers to take advantage of your offer by adding a quick link to it in your post. Take a look at the following example by StudioSuits to see what we mean:
Users can simply click “Add to cart” to finalize their purchases or choose “Customize now” to further tailor the suit to their specific needs.
StudioSuits could also add hashtags to this story post, additional engagement stickers, and user-generated content (UGC) to encourage more views and clicks. It could also link up with influencers, affiliate marketers, and brand ambassadors to get in front of more audiences. (More on this soon.)
Note: To get even more eyes on your campaigns, consider running social media ads in addition to your PPC ads and organic content.
5. Tailor your ad copy and visuals to your target audience
Craft compelling ad copy and visuals for your audience and use Google’s recommended targeting options to reach the right people.
Google suggests using responsive search advertising, as well as broad match and Smart Bidding, in your campaigns. According to Google, advertisers who use this method earn 20% more conversions at the same cost per action as advertisers who do not utilize broad match and Smart Bidding.
In other words, with Google’s AI-powered Search ads products, you can create ads that adapt to show more relevant messages to more people without depleting your ad budget.
For instance, let’s say you run a courier service that specializes in freight delivery and decide to run ads showcasing two of your top services.
With Google’s AI features, it’ll uncover which audiences respond better to your tailored messages about your same-day freight delivery options and which ones respond better to your messages about your same-day print and delivery services. It’ll then set the right bids, audiences, and messages in place to help you get the best results.
To help Google speed this process along, choose messaging that highlights your target audience’s pain points and how your offer solves them.
We also recommend including social proof in your ads to build trust (depending on how much ad space you have).
Additional Tip 1: Build an emotional connection and captivate your target audience’s attention by including video content in your ads.
Additional Tip 2: Listen to Google! Google has a complete list of tips for effective advertising crafted by Google Ads Community Experts.
6. A/B test your ads on a smaller scale before investing in larger campaigns
Broadcast tester ads to smaller audience segments to see which ones perform best before investing more campaign dollars into them.
Simply change one variable and test an “A” version and a “B” version of your ad. For example, you might test a specific campaign image or video in version A and a different one in version B. Or you might use a different lead magnet in version A than you do in version B.
Use the results you witness to perfect your ads before investing in large-scale ad campaigns.
7. Integrate email marketing
Add the buyers and qualified leads you’ve accrued from your ads into segmented, automated email marketing campaigns. This is key to staying in touch with ad customers and nurturing ad prospects to conversion.
For instance, add your new customers to a welcome email campaign series and your new qualified prospects to a lead nurturing series.
Once these campaigns end, don’t stop communicating! Add your customers and prospects to your general newsletter and company updates email list to continue staying in touch. You might also consider adding them to additional segmented email campaigns based on their core needs and preferences.
8. Collaborate with brand advocates
Consider partnering with affiliates, influencers, and brand advocates to spread the word about your campaigns.
If you’re on a limited budget, look into micro and nano-influencers. These influencers have smaller, more curated audiences and they charge a fraction of the price. You can also swap guest posts and shoutouts with other brands you know and trust.
Additional Tip 1: Consider using social listening tools to uncover positive brand mentions and visual products you can repurpose as social proof in your campaigns.
Additional Tip 2: If you decide to work with influencers, ask them to initiate UGC campaigns (think branded hashtag contests) to encourage campaign virality. Be sure to provide influencers with the information and resources of your brand they need to succeed. For example, if you’re a health company like Certified Keto Diet, wanting to promote keto plans, you can partner with a fitness influencer to share their journey doing the 3-day keto diet.
9. Assign a dedicated team or rep to answer questions from inquiring ad prospects
Have a CS (customer service) team, rep, or VA (virtual assistant) in place ready to answer questions from inquiring ad prospects.
This is crucial to prioritize in case people have specific concerns about your ad or offer they need to have cleared up before they can feel comfortable taking action.
Conclusion
And there you have it! Today we covered nine advertising tips we recommend implementing in your marketing strategy to set your ad campaigns up for success.
Now, over to you. Are you ready to put these practices into action? Meet with your marketing and advertising teams to allocate responsibilities, plan your content, and schedule your ads.
Don’t forget to plan A/B tests prior to your official ad launch so you can focus on campaigns that have a better chance of converting.
That’s it for today, marketers. Here’s to your success!
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