1. Build a basic ad, as fast as possible. Start with a simple background, clear image, clear message, compelling offer and an actionable CTA.
2. Target your media, broad and simple. Set identical amounts of ads to be served for all days of the week and start with the modest volume. Select geography if it matters (i.e. select country and state for local businesses). Advertise in your desired language and you’re set. At the simplest level, you can run with Adacado’s default settings.
3. Turn your campaign on – at this stage your ad will need to be approved across the internet which takes up to 24 hours. Be patient, let it run, learn and let the results teach you. It is recommended that you wait 4-6 weeks of advertising to learn anything. Be sure to watch your analytics.
If the targeting you have selected is too narrow (i.e. city, language, device), target broader to get more views on your ads.
Watch your CTR rates, website traffic and other objectives you may have set.
Watch daily behavior – every business has unique customer traits.
Increase ads served to learn more – you need hundreds of clicks before you can really know anything.
We don’t recommend long drawn out planning to get going, as running and observing is better than planning and there are many ways to optimize your ads to increase your desired results.
From here, you want to begin to adjust things and see what happens. Observe your analytics or download your data into an excel sheet to see important behaviors. The key with this is to make ONE change at a time.
Analyze your customers behavior first. This means changing ad serving patterns. For example request 0 ads on Saturday’s, low volume on Sunday’s and a larger volume Monday-Wednesday, slowing down Thursday and Friday’s ads being served. Think about holiday’s too – so you don’t waste your money!
Refine your audience at any time – test how many people you can put in front of your ad or target mobile only because you have a retail store and want to attract people on the go.
Language matters – speak in simple terms, especially if you have a complex product.
Testing your creative is important in knowing what is attracting your viewers. Changing up your offer, message and CTA are 3 big components of this.
What kind of CTA’s lead to higher conversions? Using words like free, visit, see or any variation that entices a consumer to do something, will increase the likelihood for a click. Whether your goal is to increase website traffic or make a sale, it is important to keep this in mind.
As well, test different themes or set up a parallel campaign to A/B test CTA’s or messages to learn faster.
Further, if you are planning to advertise products, narrowing your product list to show your best selling products or popular products is recommended to give your ads a bit of focus.
With time, learning is done. Keep learning and adjusting until you find your pattern of success. Once you do, let your ads run and focus on another part of your business; perhaps managing your increased sales. Make sure to watch your analytics constantly to make sure it continues to behave as expected.
Lastly, as said above, be sure to revisit, refresh your creative and test new ad serving tactics every 4-6 weeks.
Just remember the secret to using an easy and effective tool like Adacado, is build quickly, get your ad out there (too much preparation is expensive people time and a lost sales opportunity), and let customer behavior be your guide for what to do next.
