PERFORMANCE ADS THAT PERFORM
Importance of Performance Marketing
“Be where your customers are” goes the oft-repeated saying. And so, it didn’t come as much of a surprise when most advertising campaigns shifted online during Covid-19 stricken 2020.
Livemint reports, digital advertising is expected to touch ₹22,300 crore in FY21 – overtaking TV ads.
Advertising online is different than purchasing ads in magazines or newspapers. You have to pay for ads upfront in print media regardless of whether it is noticed by your target audience or not.
With performance ads, you have to pay once your campaign delivers the results you desire. If you set a clear objective for your performance ad, you pay for that ad only if it has delivered on its goal. Awesome, isn’t it?
Performance marketing also helps you plan your budget better. Once your ad is optimized for required goals – be it impressions, clicks or leads, you can provide an ideal cost per action at the beginning of planning.
What makes an ad a good ad?
The delivery of your objective. Advertising is essentially a gateway to sales. Whether it is brand recall, brand awareness, getting leads or conversions, your ad should meet its goal. If your ad looks amazing but gets you no results, it is good art, not a good ad.
Get noticed, get results. Stand out from other advertisements and media content that competes for your target audience’s attention. Getting people to read your ad is the real challenge. They tend to skip or ignore ads since they are already overloaded with information. Your ad should have the potential to break through all that cluttered noise.
A performance ad should be creative and should inspire action. It should connect with your target audience and relate to your brand. If it does neither, it is not a good ad.
The mantra is to advertise in the right place; at the right time, and say the right things; to the right people.
Best practices for performance marketing ads
- Focused Targeting. You should display your ads only to a target audience of potential customers for conversions.
- Always split test multiple ad designs and its targeting. Consumer behaviour as well as ad formats change constantly. Try to incorporate multiple ad formats like carousel or vertical posts/videos since we have turned into a mobile-first world, leaving behind desktops.
- Use Call-To-Actions. While CTA is essential and can be featured in the ad copy/video, make sure you reinforce it with Facebook’s clickable CTA buttons.
- Include faces to get noticed. Try using faces in your designs because people love seeing faces. A study suggests that a specific group of cells in our brain fires only when we see a face. While you choose images that stand out, consider colour psychology. Another study says that 90% of snap judgements your audience makes about a product are based on colour.
- Choose your ad placement wisely. Different ad placements perform differently. Some placements are best for conversions, some are low cost and some can be great for retargeting.
- Utilize specific imagery to match geographic regions. It is easy to set up multiple Facebook ad campaigns targeting different geographical locations. And so, you should capitalise on it and change the content of your ads to match the region you want to target.
- Use minimal text in your image – ideally, less than 20% text. And make sure you use high resolution images. Images that are about 1200 x 628px work best for single-image ads and square images that are 1080 x 1080px for carousel ads.
- Personalize your ads and choose your images carefully. Your ad will be displayed in your target audience’s feeds alongside posts uploaded by their family and friends. Make sure that your ad looks like it belongs there.
- Stories ads FTW! 500 million users check in with the story feature every day on the app. According to Instagram, ⅓ of the most viewed stories on the platform have been created by a business. Running high-impact and time-limited offers is a great way to advertise using Instagram stories.
- Use Collection ads. Most users prefer shopping directly in-platform rather than following links to a landing page. Collection ads can be a solid investment, as they allow viewers to make in-app purchases.
- Keywords are BAE. If you use keywords that are too broad, chances are that Google may place your ad in front of the wrong audience. This can result in fewer clicks but higher ad spend. Be careful while selecting your keywords!
- Provide a solution. Your ads should have an answer for the searcher’s query. And while your ads need to match your searcher’s intent, your headline and copy should match your keywords.
- Optimise your landing page. Your marketing efforts should not be limited to your ad – user experience after the audience clicks on your ad is equally important. Make sure that your landing page uses relevant keywords and has valuable answers to your user’s questions.
- Explore the Promoted Trend Spotlight feature. It complements the Promoted Trend advertising option on the platform and places your ad at the very top of the “Explore’ tab (for the first two visits per person per day). This improves your ads visibility substantially. You can either advertise static messages or 6 second GIFs and videos.
- Images generate leads. Advertising tweets with images often increases leads. Pro tip: Use multi-image option to improve your ad.
- Use dead simple Call-To-Actions. Your CTA is the hook where you tell people what you need them to do. You must use direct language, clearly explaining why it will benefit them.
Youtube
- Grab your audience’s attention immediately. Don’t wait for the “good part” of your ad – if you do, your audience will hit the skip button and not bother watching your ad. Your hook should be within the first few seconds of the ad to grab your audience’s attention.
- Use an emotional appeal in your ad. When people feel something, they are more likely to engage with your ad. Pulling at your target audience’s heartstrings while creating a relatable experience is always effective.
- Personalize your ads. This helps you reach your target audience and get them involved in your business, products or services. Not everyone will be interested in your business for the same reasons. But personalized ads will let you deliver a tailored experience for the audience’s unique interest.
- Use carousel ads to showcase numerous products and services, since it lets you add multiple images in one post. Single image ads with a high quality photo and text works best for sponsored content.
Performance ads can perform better if you optimize and monitor them regularly. But to get a good ROI and low CPC, you need a person with experience who can guide you through the nitty gritties of best practices of performance marketing ads on various platforms.
Pop Communications has sharp, creative minds to help you get the best ROI and make sure that your performance ads are actually performing desirably. Reach out to us at [email protected] for further information.
Remember, a good performance ad makes you money instead of costing you money. And we’re available to help you achieve exactly that. Study this article carefully and use these tips to make sure your ads – POP!
