As digital marketers, one of our most pressing issues is traffic.
How can we easily and affordably attract people's attention, drive them to our websites, and convert them into subscribers and customers?
Digital advertising is the key. And if you know how to make it work, it may provide you complete control over your traffic flow as well as help you sell more.
This chapter will teach you how to plan, set up, and optimise your ads, as well as the metrics you'll need to monitor, the jargon you'll use as a media buyer, and the people in your company who should be in charge of digital advertising.
But first, let's clarify why purchased traffic is a better investment than organic traffic.
What Is the Distinction Between Paid and Organic Traffic?
Isn't it true that free traffic is usually the goal? As a result, most businesses prioritise organic traffic. After all, if you can generate a continuous stream of free traffic, you'll save money.
However, as with everything in life, you get what you pay for.
The simplest way to illustrate this is to make a parallel between a water hose and rain.
If you're getting more traffic than you need, you can slow it down using bought traffic. You have control over where it goes, how fast it goes, and when it goes.
Organic traffic, on the other hand, has the consistency of rain. You're not sure when or if it'll arrive, how constant it'll be, or how long it'll last. You can watch the weather channel all you want. You have no power.
If Google changes its algorithm, you may lose organic traffic. You may lose traffic if a competitor has a large launch. You also have no say in where the traffic goes. Even minor changes, such as changing the URL of your landing page, can cause havoc.
You can have complete control over purchased traffic without paying anything. You accomplish this by creating funnels that repay your ad expenditure.
In essence, you may recruit consumers for nothing, and then utilise easy strategies to build loyalty and maximise your customers' lifetime value once your advertising costs have been repaid.
Even better, it's not an either/or situation.
The more your paid traffic, the higher your organic traffic, because good advertising drives traffic, and pages with a lot of visitors tend to rank higher in search engines.
This results in an upward traffic acquisition spiral. A win-win situation, if you will.
However, it is critical to be realistic. You cannot run a single traffic campaign and expect it to deposit a million dollars into your bank account.
If you want a steady stream of leads and customers for your company, you must approach this as a system.
Top 3 Paid Traffic Sources
Facebook, Google, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter are some of the finest venues for paid traffic.
To know which one is best for you, you must first understand where your clients hang out and which ad platforms are appropriate for the type of marketing you conduct.
In most circumstances, you'll begin with Facebook and Google. According to Business Insider, these two sites account for 80% of all referral traffic, which is more than all other platforms combined.
But, once again, it depends on what you're attempting to do.
Google Is Similar to the Yellow Pages
People begin their quest for information on Google because it is a search engine. So it's similar to the Yellow Pages.
To generate traffic from Google, you'll bid on terms that will help people find you and potentially lead to a good sales conversation.
Facebook Is Similar to a Billboard
It's similar to driving along the highway when you're scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed. As you scroll, you'll notice adverts, promoted content, and random comments.
And, if you're prepared to pay, your message will appear in the newsfeed of your intended demographic.
You may spend as little as you wish on Facebook while still expanding your reach.
They know a lot about us because it's a social platform and they collect data on our activities every day. With all of that data, they are the most potent ad platform accessible today.
If you target your ads precisely enough, you'll get the right people to see your message.
YouTube Is Similar to Television
The number of minutes watched on YouTube is the most important metric. Their purpose is to keep you on the site watching videos, thus they function similarly to traditional television, inserting advertisements within the movies and disrupting people's viewing.
Yes, it's disruptive, but with YouTube, your advertising is always relevant.
This is because you can target your adverts depending on the YouTube channels your audience follows, the types of videos they view, and what they search for.
So, what are the top three sources of paid traffic? Where should you begin with your bought traffic campaigns?
Facebook, Google, and YouTube will all provide you with high-quality traffic from people who are interested in your offerings.
Okay, now you have a decent foundation for the plan we're about to explore. Let's look at the methods you'll utilize to implement a winning advertising campaign.
Methods of Effective Digital Advertising
We've discovered that bought traffic is the most effective (and least expensive) strategy to drive traffic. Now let's talk about how to build advertising that draws your top consumers magnetically.
NOTE: We'll concentrate on Facebook advertising here, but you can apply the same method to any platform.
Two Ideas for Assessing Your Target Audience
How do you know what kind of ads to run and how to accurately target those ads? It all boils down to two fundamental ideas: the customer journey and traffic "temperature."
The Customer Journey
Remember, the Customer Value Journey is the journey consumers take as they develop a relationship with your company, from initial contact to an ultimate transaction.
The three main stages of this Journey are as follows:
Awareness. This is the point at which new prospects learn about your brand and how you can help them solve their challenges.
Evaluation. When prospects are seriously considering making a purchase, they are in the centre of the funnel. Their main concern is whether you are the best supplier.
Conversion. This is the point at which customers take action and buy something from you.
The Temperature of the Traffic
Your audience has a different relationship with you at each level of the Customer Journey. They barely know you and may not even know what you do at the top of the funnel. However, as they progress down the funnel, they learn more about you and get more dedicated and loyal to you.
They "warm up to you," as they say, which is why we call this developing relationship "traffic temperature."
The cold traffic. This is typically new traffic from folks in the Awareness stage. These people are potential customers for your company but have never heard of you or your brand.
Indoctrination is your goal with cold traffic. You want to introduce your company to new people and keep them coming back for more.
The traffic is warm. Warm traffic comes from folks who recognise you but haven't purchased anything yet. It corresponds to the Evaluation stage.
With warm traffic, your goal is acquisition or convert a site visitor into a lead.
Traffic is heavy. People at the Conversion stage generate the most traffic. These are your buyers, those who are looking to buy or have already purchased from you.
Your goal with hot traffic is monetisation, which means selling a high-value product to your most loyal clients.
Ultimately, you want to turn people from cold to hot, converting fresh leads into committed consumers who will buy from you again and again.
You accomplish this by tailoring your message to the prospect's temperature.
You don't always offer a sale to cold traffic. You'll devote more time to relationship development. When there is a lot of traffic, the relationship is safe. You speak to them as if they are a friend, and you make offers based on topics you know they are interested in.
Believe it or not, just understanding these two concepts will vastly increase your capacity to design great traffic campaigns. Simply relating to people based on their temperature will result in increased trust and engagement.
Now, let's look at the five components of a successful advertising campaign.
The 5 Elements of a Successful Campaign
Every ad campaign has five main components: the offer itself, the ad's language and design (which we call "creative"), the ad scent (the whole campaign's coherent look and feel), and the targeting, or to who you pitch your offer.
1. Your Proposal
Your offer is distinct from your product or service. Your company is based around a product, and your advertising campaign is built around an offer.
So, what exactly is an offer? It is the one-of-a-kind combination of your product or service with other bonuses or add-ons, as well as all the specifics of your promotion:
Finished products
The cost
The timetable
How it will be provided
and much more
So, even if you just have one product, you can sell it in a variety of ways, resulting in hundreds of different offers.
Your offer also serves as the beginning point for your advertising effort. When you get it right, everything else usually falls into place.
But the opposite is also true: if you put up a lousy offer, your ad will not convert.
2. Your Copy
The messaging of your marketing campaign is referred to as ad text. It should be straightforward and appealing so that the benefits of engaging with the ad and taking whatever action you're asking for shine out.
A powerful emotional hook is included in good copy. It's enticing and convincing without relying on hype.
In general, you should begin your ad by addressing a pain issue that your target is experiencing. The answer should then be provided as your offer.
3. The Innovative
The graphic aspects of your ad, such as the image, video, or carousel images, are referred to as creative.
Don't let the phrase "creative" deceive you; it doesn't have to be highly imaginative. A good creative express his message graphically in a matter of seconds or minutes. As a result, it supplements and improves your copy.
We like to be literal with our ad creativity at DigitalxMarketing. We visually display the offer whenever feasible so that consumers may see what the deliverable is at a glance.
4. Ad Scent
Ad scent relates to the consistency, or "sameness," of your campaign.
What is the significance of this?
Because trust is a significant conversion component. People will seriously evaluate your offer if they are confident that it is valid. If you induce doubt or dread, they will leave without taking action.
We use simple visual clues (or fragrance) to guarantee we're in the proper location every time we click. If we lose scent at any moment, we start to suspect we're in the wrong area or being duped. As soon as that happens, we exit and return to where we began.
Your visitors should always get the impression that they are on the right track.
This is accomplished by building a visual, messaging, and offer presentation flow from your ad to your landing page and every other aspect of your campaign.
Focus on three factors to achieve congruency:
Design: Use similar graphics and colours throughout the campaign.
Use similar language and benefits in your messaging.
Offer: Your offer should remain consistent throughout.
In digital advertising, ad fragrance is low-hanging fruit. If you get it correctly, you'll increase your conversion rate and lower your costs.
5. Targeting
The third component of a high-performing ad campaign is targeting, which is critical because even a fantastic offer will not convert if it is presented to the wrong group.
When planning your targeting, keep two rules in mind.
To begin, be as descriptive as possible.
Specificity is related to research. Learn as much as you can about your target audience while preparing your targeting. You want to know your target audience so well that you can identify specific interests that only this group has.
Second, tailor the message to your desired temperature.
As previously discussed, temperature refers to tailoring your message to the level of relationship you have with your target audience.
Here are some suggestions for determining the proper temperature.
The cold traffic. You're only presenting yourself to new audiences here, thus you have three aims (none of which are to sell):
Indoctrination. By providing valuable information for free, you can aim to gain trust and reputation.
Pixelling. When they land on your content, pixel them so you can target them with more adverts and warm them up.
Segmentation. We know they're interested in email marketing if they click on a blog post about it, so we can send them a more relevant offer later.
What types of deals do you make with cold traffic?
Blog entries
Updates on social media
Videos with content
Podcasts
Lead Magnets
Quizzes
White Papers
YouTube advertisements for content
Twitter advertisements for pillar content
Infographics
You'll pixel those who interact with your ad or click through to free material when you pay for cold traffic. You want to provide them with value so that they will like your brand. So make an effort to entertain, inspire, and educate everyone who clicks through.
The traffic is warm. Consider warm traffic to be acquaintances who have expressed interest in you in return. There has not yet been a formed relationship, but there has been a connection. As a result, you'll direct these advertisements to:
Leads who signed up for your email list. (This list will be uploaded to a traffic platform.)
People who have been pixeled while visiting your website.
Fans on Facebook, Twitter followers, YouTube channel subscribers, and so forth.
Your warm traffic objectives are as follows:
Create leads
Increase low-cost sales.
What kinds of deals do you use to entice visitors?
Lead Magnets
Surveys or quizzes
Webinars, whether free or paid,
Low-cost offers/flash sales
Product demonstrations
Videos for branding
Books (free or charged)
Trial offers
Hot Traffic. These are your potential customers. They could be people who opted in but are on the fence about purchasing from you. They could have added items to their shopping basket but never purchased them. They may have previously purchased something from you but have not reacted to current offers.
Your objectives for running advertising to this group are as follows:
Activation. Remind them that you're still available if they haven't purchased it in a while.
High-priced sales. Buyers of lower-priced products can be upsold.
What types of offers do you provide to high-traffic areas?
Events
Webinars for a fee
High-priced offers
Services performed for you
Whether the weather is cold, warm, or scorching, getting the temperature just right allows you to get your campaign in front of the correct people. And the more precisely your adverts can be targeted, the better they will perform.
Creating an Ad Campaign
How can you combine all of these ideas and features to produce a great advertising campaign?
The key is to establish everything ahead of time—copy, creative, and targeting—before attempting to set up your campaigns. The goal is to design highly targeted advertisements that communicate directly with your target demographic. We use the Ad Grid for this.
From Strategy to Scale: Ad Grid
The ad grid is a method of designing campaigns that are ideally aligned with the temperature and interests of the individuals you're targeting.
The aim is to anticipate the types of individuals you'll be targeting and the hooks that will most likely pique their interest, so you can be confident you're making a strong marketing/message fit.
Step 1: Determine your avatars.
An avatar is a profile of a particular type of individual who might be interested in your offer (for example entrepreneur, stay-at-home mom, or consultant). The avatars for your campaign may differ from those for your business, which is fine.
You'll have 2-4 different avatars for each traffic campaign. Of course, you can have more, but the more avatars you have, the more time it will take to plan your campaign.
Consider your offer (e.g., the lead magnet, blog article, or webinar you're promoting) and brainstorm many various types of people who would want and benefit from it.
Step 2: Locate the hooks
What is the most enticing aspect of your offer? Each benefit or outcome of your product can be transformed into a hook to pique your audience's interest.
In general, you'll make hooks depending on these six outcomes.
Have. What do they get if they download and use your offer? How do their lives look before and after the transformation?
Feel. How would accepting your offer make them feel better, smarter, or more successful?
A typical day. How did you alter or improve their typical day?
Status. How do people improve their position or become better persons as a result of eating your offer?
Proof/results. What social proof, case studies, or testimonials do you have to back up your offer? How can you foster the sense of belonging that people will have by joining those who have responded?
Automation and speed. In your offer, emphasise the time savings or the ease of learning or using the material.
Don't feel obligated to construct a hook for each of these scenarios. However, be imaginative in coming up with many benefits or results that will pique the interest of your avatars.
Step 3: Write your advertisement copy
You may write the ad copy yourself or outsource it to a copywriter because the ad grid clearly defines the avatars and hooks you're targeting.
You want unique ad copy for each part, regardless of who writes it: Avatar1/Hook1, Avatar2/Hook1, and so on. And you want the copy for the full ad for each segment: text, title, description, and ad type.
So, if you have four avatars and five hooks, you'll need to write 20 adverts.
This level of segmentation gives you the best likelihood of marketing success. Rather than making generic advertising for a few avatars or hooks, you'll make highly targeted ads for certain categories of people (avatars) with specific interests (hooks).
This method increases your chances of earning a decent return on your ad expenditure!
Step 4: Conduct Avatar Research
After you've created your message, it's important to investigate your avatars to determine which interest groups you'll target with your advertising.
For this, research each avatar separately, answering the following questions:
Who are the thought leaders, authoritative figures, and large brands in your niche?
What books, magazines, and newspapers does your ideal customer consume?
What kinds of events do they go to?
What websites do they visit?
Where do they call home?
What instruments do they employ?
What distinguishes this group from others?
Do a Google search and ask people in your target audience for answers. It may take some time to locate the answers, but they will assist you in getting your adverts in front of the individuals who need to see them. So take your time and do it well!
You should also employ this little-known method...
The "But No One Else Would" technique is what we call it, and here's how it works.
Assume you want to target golfers with an ad. You want to uncover hobbies that only keen golfers are aware of so that no one but qualified prospects will click on your ad.
Even casual golfers are likely to recognize Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, but only die-hard golf fans are familiar with Bubba Watson. So, while creating your ad, you should target people who are interested in Bubba Watson.
This is what you want to find in your avatar research: hobbies that only die-hard fans are aware of, so you can get the proper people to see your advertising.
Step 5: Make or Hire Ad Creatives
The graphic element you'll utilize in each ad is your creativity. Each hook requires at least one invention.
How should your creatives look?
Perform a Google image search for the terms in each hook to see what comes up.
The top-ranking photos demonstrate what people consider when they hear your keyword.
Use that as motivation. But don't imitate. Create fresh graphics or films that include imagery associated with your term but also have your brand's appearance and feel.
Step 6: Create your adverts and analyse the outcomes.
You now have all of the assets you need for your ad campaigns. It's time to create your adverts. Use the ad grid to assist you in creating each ad:
Make use of the avatar for targeting.
Create the ads using the copy and creative you've created.
Use your avatar interests to establish an audience of half a million to 1.5 million people.
Then activate your adverts and let them run for a week. When you start seeing results, you can start collecting metrics.
Your best success statistic is determined by the goal of your campaign and the temperature you're aiming for. It could be:
price per click
the price per 1,000 impressions
price per acquisition
ROI
Or any other indicator that measures your achievement.
For each avatar/hook, record that metric in your ad grid underneath the ad copy. The metrics should be collected at 7 days, 14 days, 21 days, and at the end of the campaign.
Step 7: Scale
Scaling is about determining what works, what doesn't, and how to achieve larger better results.
A campaign can be scaled in two ways:
Horizontally: If your avatar results are above average, buy traffic on additional ad networks to increase your visibility to that set of consumers.
Vertically, if a particular hook or avatar is performing very well, build additional ad sets for that group on the same platform.
Process Improvement
The purpose of digital advertising is to get cold traffic and gradually warm it up so that you can effectively attract new users to your website, get them to opt-in, and persuade them to buy.
To accomplish this, you will create campaigns that comprise advertisements for all temperatures of your target population. The challenge is to keep it inside your budget while targeting various demographics. Here's how to get the most out of your advertising budget.
Your winning formula is 6:3:1
Assume your daily budget permits you to spend $10. Your daily expenses will be as follows:
$6 per day on cold traffic, driving cold visitors to your site using only content
$3 per day to convert warm traffic into leads or buyers
$1 per day for remarketing and selling a higher-priced product
That ratio may fluctuate regularly according to your needs, but it is a solid compromise that allows you to target all temperatures while keeping your spending under control.
Ads Optimization
When targeting different temperatures, your adverts must be tailored to the level of relationship.
Improving a Weak Campaign
If a campaign is underperforming, return to your offer. If you have a strong offer, your other elements can be weak and yet function. But nothing else counts if your offer isn't good enough.
In certain circumstances, your ads will perform well at first, but their effectiveness will diminish with time. This usually indicates that ad fatigue has set in.
People have seen the advertisement too many times and are no longer responding to it.
Ad fatigue can be alleviated in two ways:
Retarget to a different audience.
Replace the campaign.
The Lingo: Digital Advertising's Language
What are the phrases you should be familiar with as a digital advertiser?
The Temperature of the Traffic
The cold, warm, or hot consumers that you target with your digital advertising efforts.
Cold Traffic
Ads are targeted to audiences who have no prior knowledge of your brands, products, or people. Ads aimed at cold audiences introduce the company to the prospect while also establishing trust and authority to raise awareness.
Warm Traffic
Audiences who are aware of your brands, products, or people but have not yet converted to customers or have not purchased in a long time. Ads aimed at warm audiences should be tailored to persuade prospects that you have the best answer.
Hot Traffic
Audiences who have previously purchased advertisements. These individuals are aware of your reputation and have used your product or service. Hot audience ads should turn a customer into a high-ticket or recurring buyer. The majority of ad campaigns to hot audiences will use retargeting.
Campaign for Retargeting
A marketing campaign that reaches out to clients and prospects with a message and offer based on their previous behaviour. This behaviour could include filling out a lead form, making a purchase, or visiting a page on your website. Ad platforms such as Facebook and Google offer ad retargeting.
Frequency
How many times has an advertisement been shown to the folks you're trying to reach?
Ideally, you should keep the frequency below ten. When individuals watch the same ad too frequently, it gets irritating and can lead to ad fatigue.
Relevance
The Facebook metric determines how relevant your ad is to your intended audience. It's known as a "quality score" in Google Adwords because it gauges people's involvement and how much they enjoy your ad.
Metrics You'll Use to Determine Success
What metrics should a digital advertiser pay attention to?
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The number of clicks is divided by the number of impressions on an advertisement or other call-to-action. The higher the click-through rate, the more prospects you will move through the customer journey.
Cost Per Acquisition of Customer (CPA)
The amount spent on advertising is divided by the number of clients gained. Investigate this metric further by calculating CPA by traffic campaign, traffic source, and other variables.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
The amount of money spent on advertising is divided by the number of leads generated. Drill down on this indicator once more by calculating CPL by traffic campaign, traffic source, and other factors.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
The amount spent on advertising is divided by the number of clicks on an ad, ad set, or ad campaign. This is, believe it or not, the least essential of these four measures.
The expense of reaching a million people. This is the measure to employ when developing a campaign to broaden your reach or raise brand awareness.
The Roles: Who Is in Charge of Digital Advertising?
Who should be in charge of your digital advertising? Where does accountability reside in the organisation?
Media Buyer / Paid Traffic Expert
The paid traffic team (or an individual) should be in charge of setting up and deploying your digital advertising.
They will rely on input from various teams and individuals within the firm, including designers for developing ad designs and landing pages, marketing and sales for developing enticing offers, and content marketing for locating outstanding material to route cold traffic to.
Sales and marketing
As the competition for attention grows online, all marketing teams must learn to acquire traffic while generating a positive return on ad expenditure.
Content Promotion
Any team member who creates material (blogs, podcasts, videos, press releases, and so on) must understand how that content might be used by a paid traffic specialist.
Analytics and data
A sponsored traffic team needs access to an analyst who knows the goals and processes involved in buying traffic to deliver a positive return on ad expenditure.
Summary
Digital advertising is an important approach for digital marketers since it allows them to manage the flow of traffic.
To be successful, you must build separate campaigns for each stage of the Customer Journey—and you must understand the "temperature" of each stage. With DigitalxMarketing, we’ll help you drive traffic like a pro in no time.
DigitalxMarketing Ltd has its head office in Wellington NZ with its support and resource centre based in the Philippines. DigitalxMarketing implements the latest digital strategies, tactics, tools, platforms and technologies to deliver integrated digital marketing services so your digital footprint can be found online.
Contact DigitalxMarketing today!
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