Strong advertising is crucial for growing your business, but you need to know how to approach advertising to get the most from it. With so many things to learn and adapt to, there are many mistakes that people can make when just starting. However, knowing how to approach advertising and which advertising mistakes to avoid helps you optimize your campaigns. Avoiding these mistakes lets you effectively increase brand awareness, drive sales, and see better overall returns on investment from your campaigns.
Here we'll review some advertising mistakes to avoid, along with tips for ad campaigns to successfully advertise in Portland and beyond.
1. You Didn't Research Beforehand
When developing your ad campaigns, you need to make ads with your audience in mind. In-depth target audience research ensures you're reaching the people most likely to become customers. As you conduct your initial research, create a specific target persona and determine your customer journey to determine the best way to reach your customers.
Developing a clear idea of who you need to reach allows you to create all your marketing materials with them in mind. That way, your ads, and content will resonate with them to the best effect.
2. You Don't Have a Marketing Plan
Your ads also need to be meticulously planned to implement your advertising strategy effectively. Developing your plan can take a significant amount of time, but you need to make sure it's thoroughly thought out. You need to know what your specific goals are in the short and long term and consider how to avoid any issues along the way. With your marketing plan in place, you can identify what's working or what isn't to make any adjustments as needed.
3. Your Ads Aren't Optimized for Their Platforms
Your ads need to perform well on their respective platforms. If they're not presented seamlessly and unobtrusively, they won't be effective. To optimize your digital ads, you will need to make sure they aren't too big and avoid clunky or awkward wording. Meanwhile, avoid making your social media ads too wordy. For video ads, try to keep them short but memorable, after all, you have around 15 seconds to attract and hold your audience's attention. With proper ad optimization, you can better connect with audiences and stay top-of-mind. It’s better to make fewer ads that perform well than release ads on every platform that won’t resonate with your audience effectively.
4. You Don't Have Ad Diversity
Although your ads need to be cohesive and consistent in design, you can't rely on a single ad to power all of your campaigns. Instead, create multiple versions of your ads in various formats, such as video or carousel ads for social media. With some diversity across your campaigns, you can connect with different audience segments and ensure your ads are compatible with each platform. Diverse ads will keep your campaigns effective for a longer period since customers won’t tire of your ads as quickly. It also increases the likelihood people will remember and recall your ads because each version reinforces their earlier impressions of your ad.
5. The Call-to-Action Is Ineffective
The call-to-action on your ads needs to be compelling and can't consist solely of a link to your website's homepage. You need to make it clear what you want your audience to do, but you also need to provide the most convenient method to follow through. Otherwise, your audience may be unclear or reluctant to take the desired action. You should also consider the specific type of call-to-action based on where people are in the buyer's journey. Think about the difference between a branding and a call-to-action campaign. In branding ads, you want people to learn more about your business. Whereas a call-to-action campaign leads people toward a sale or encourages them to contact you directly. For each call to action you implement, consider the action you want people to take and how easily they can do it, then test it yourself to see how your messaging comes across.
6. You're Not Tracking Your Campaigns
You also need to track how your customers are interacting with your ads. In addition to monitoring interaction, you need to monitor campaign performance to ensure your ads are bringing the desired results. For digital ads, you can track analytics to gauge their performance. To follow your TV and print media ad results, you can use either a designated phone number or website to see engagement. Before implementing this strategy, make sure you define your marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) based on your specific goals, helping you achieve the highest possible ROI. It’s incredibly difficult to determine how well your campaigns perform if you don’t create them with the necessary systems to measure performance.
7. You're Not Testing Your Ad Performance
Measures such as A/B testing allow you to learn as you go by seeing what's working and pivoting toward that. It is much more helpful than merely guessing and hoping for results. Send out multiple emails or ads with altered wording or different images to parts of your audience to see what performs best.
Through testing and analytics, you can also get access to the data needed to precisely determine how well your ads perform. From there, you can choose how to optimize your ads further to meet or even exceed your goals by improving campaigns that aren’t performing well and heightening campaigns that are already doing well. As you conduct A/B testing, think of it as a tool to understand your audience because it shows you what resonates with them. Experiment with your content based on what you think they like, then let your results confirm your assumptions and inform future campaigns.
Connect with a Media Company to Avoid Advertising Mistakes
If you want to make sure your advertising avoids these potential issues, there are plenty of ways to achieve the best possible results. If this is too daunting for you to implement yourself, connect with a media company to help you develop a successful advertising strategy. They will have the resources and experience needed to create ads that get results and meet your brand's specific needs while letting you focus on the necessities of running your business.
