Running fast, but… like a headless chicken! Ever heard that expression? That image often comes to mind when I see or hear about certain marketing actions by some online businesses.
In online marketing, the first thing to do before starting any activity is to ask ourselves what we really want to achieve. So when planning an ad campaign, the first thing we should do is answer the question:
What do I want to achieve with my ads?
The headless chickens will quickly reply with a resounding: Sell more! But those of you who see ad campaigns as one more tool to achieve the goals set in your business plan or digital marketing plan will answer with one of these 4 responses, depending on your goals and strategy:
1.- I want my ads to be seen a lot while paying as little as possible. Here, the aim is to raise awareness of or strengthen our brand, product or service. Our campaign goal will be to achieve enough impressions for consumers to remember us and keep us in mind when making a purchase decision. Our strategy will clearly be branding.
2.- I want my ads to drive visits to the campaign website. Here, the campaign’s goal will be to spread our message or the values we want to communicate. We’ll be looking to engage users with our brand, product or service, so our strategy will focus on driving traffic to the website.
3.- I want my ads to generate enough interest to complete an online sale, fill out a form or subscribe to the newsletter. Our goal will be to capture potential customers (whom we want to retain), and our strategy will be geared toward that. We hope to see a return on our investment with immediate results, though we understand this may take place in the medium or long term.
4.- I want my ads to drive sales with an immediate return on investment. Whether because we have very little chance of retaining customers (depending on our product or service) or because our financial goals are strictly short term, we’ll use a strategy aimed at an immediate return on the investment made.
Every company seeks a return on its communication efforts. However, the timeframe for expecting that return varies.
No strategy is better than another in absolute terms. The choice will depend on several factors: our type of business, our position in the distribution chain, company size, the product or service life cycle and our available budget. Choosing the right strategy is the first key to a successful ad campaign.
Another important aspect of a good campaign is deciding the level of reach and affinity we need. By reach we mean the percentage of target consumers we want to reach and, by affinity, users’ level of interest in our products or services.
If I ask you what level of reach and affinity you think is right for your ad campaign, the impulsive among you will say you want lots of reach with high affinity. While that would be ideal for any campaign, keep in mind that the two are somewhat opposed. The more people we try to reach, the harder it is for them all to be highly interested in our products and/or services.
So the second key to a good ad campaign is defining the level of reach and affinity needed to achieve our goals. Easy enough if our strategy is clear, since it will determine the reach-affinity level required:
• For a branding strategy, broad reach is appropriate
• For a traffic strategy, we’ll need higher affinity
• For a customer acquisition strategy, much higher affinity is required
• With an immediate-return strategy, very high affinity is essential to avoid paying for impressions or visits from people with no real interest in buying right away.
Finally, if we want a successful ad campaign, the third key to success is defining the right level of segmentation for our target audience.
Segmentation criteria can vary widely, but in general, the more affinity we need, the more precise our reach must be and, therefore, the more we need to segment. Some of the most common segmentation criteria are:
• Gender
• Age
• Location or type of area
• Educational or sociocultural level
• Hobbies
• Lifestyle and consumption habits
Naturally, when our goal is reach, we can define broad target audiences and use low segmentation. Likewise, branding campaigns (high reach) don’t need highly segmented audiences. In contrast, immediate-ROI strategies require very tight segmentation so that the people who see our campaign are very likely to be interested in our product or service.
Whether you’re planning an ad campaign for this Christmas or using services like Google Adwords or Facebook Ads, remember that for your digital marketing strategy to succeed you must: choose the right strategy for your goals, determine the reach and affinity needed, and choose the right level of segmentation.
