By Deborah Kurfiss, Umbrella Content Marketing Director on May 27, 2022
Wish your digital ads like your Google ads and Facebook ads were performing better? Check to see if you are following these digital advertising musts.
Decide you specifically want to address in the ad and create it accordingly. If you don’t know who your client’s audience is, it’s time to do some market research and use available tools such as Google Analytics to learn all you can about them. Are you sure your client’s audience is who you –you’re your client — think they are?
Of course, it’s possible to have multiple audiences even for the same product or service. But in your ad, you need to decide which one you are addressing so you can create an ad that speaks to their challenges or desires.
Even though you have settled on your audience, you still need to choose which specific message you want to convey in this ad. Your client may want to throw in multiple messages – restrain them. This is one of the most important digital advertising musts.
Determine your goal in creating this ad. Is it for them to click through to a product page and hopefully buy? Fill out a form to get a newsletter? Create brand awareness? Call a phone number for more information or to set an appointment?
Keep it as simple as possible. Limit your ad to one call to action and one link (if any).
You may need to educate your clients about brand. A lot of small business people don’t realize branding is pretty much everything they do not just a logo.
When it comes to advertising, the message, voice, graphics, layout, colors and fonts all need to be selected with an eye to your client’s brand. Ideally, your client’s audience should be able to immediately recognize one of your client’s ads just from the look of it.
The mistake many marketers make, and it is unforgivable, is to run ads with generic messages they could just as well represent the competition as their client. There is something unique about every product and company, and if there isn’t, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Even with fungible products that are all pretty much the same, there are aspects such as customer serve and shipping to set a client apart.
Similarly, if you use barely edited stock images for all your ads, you are missing an opportunity to grab your audience with your visuals and create a look and feel that is immediately recognizable.
Color palette, design elements and consistent font use all goes into this too of course.
Advertisements shouldn’t try to tell customers all about a product or service. They should grab attention, make them more aware of the brand, and if they are not just for brand awareness, get customers to take a specific desired action.
So, keep it simple. Focus on the one message you want the audience to take away. But don’t be too wordy about it.
Facebook used to only allow 20% of image-based ads to be text. Though they have quietly removed that requirement, it’s still a good rule to keep text below 20% in image-based ads.
And speaking of text, don’t use too many fonts. If you use more than two, your ad will look busy and hard to read.
Any other elements in your ad such as shaped, lines and borders should serve to pull everything together, not distract from getting your message across. If in doubt whether or not to use an element, don’t.
Your ad should focus on what you can do for your client’s customer, not just blowing your own horn. Keep the focus externally focused toward the customer not internally focused toward the company. This is critical among our digital advertising musts.
And this applies to more than text. It also applies to graphics.
You want the audience to be able to see who your client is, but their logo should not dominate the ad. You want your audience’s focus to be on what your client’s products can do for them and the action you want them to take.
Video brings the viewer into an experience much more than a static image. So why wouldn’t you want that close connection in your advertising?
Video is wildly popular. The average person spent 100 minutes a day watching online videos last year!
So it’s not surprising that it’s been reported that adding a video ad can increase conversion 35%.
Now, you can offer an even more immersive experience to your audience with 3D ads. One option is Google 3D Swirl. 3D swirl enables your audience to interact with the ad and feel they are part of it. Don’t be the last agency to offer it to your clients!
And don’t forget considering audio to your video and 3D ads as another way to immerse customers.
No doubt you’re doing A/B testing, but sometimes we can get a bit lazy. When testing multiple versions of an ad or campaign, be sure to test all the important elements… not just the one you think might make a difference. At the very least that includes
Test one thing at a time so you can be sure what factor makes the difference. Of course, layout and visual elements can also have an impact.
If your agency’s focus isn’t digital advertising, that doesn’t mean you need to turn down clients who need it or disregard important digital advertising musts. You can resell expert Umbrella White Label Google Advertising services and White Label Facebook Advertising services.
Contact Umbrella for a free, no-obligation consultation to discuss how we can help you help your clients.
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