Five things to consider before launching a paid advertisement
Who are you targeting?
The first step of a launching a successful paid advertisement is understanding the most relevant target audience for your product/service. Allocating a budget towards a campaign you believe will produce great results, to then find out that your actual target audience hasn’t been able to see, is pointless. This is without to mention the financial loss of showing your campaign to an audience who doesn’t care about your content.
Take the time to fully understand the demographic, buying habits, behaviours and the many other elements of your target audience which will cause a high percentage to engage with your campaign. This may seem like a small and obvious variable, but it will be the difference between a successful and a failed campaign.
What platform is going to produce the best results?
Once a target audience has been identified, you now need to consider what platform your money is best spent on.
The question you need to ask is: “Where does your audience spend most of the time-consuming content?”
This is easier said than done, but there are multiple ways to gauge an understanding what platform is best to target. Take the time to read studies/results of surveys undertaken by platform-specific demographics and monitor those results in conjunction against your target audience.
Have you ever thought about conducting your own survey? Granted, this will take a bit more time and effort but you will get a much better understanding about the behaviours and motivations of your target audience – it will only add to the success of your adverts!
What is your objective?
Setting a goal from the start is pivotal as its fundamental to know where you are heading. Before spending hours planning a paid strategy, if you are wishy washy with your end goal then how do you know you’re heading in the right direction.
Do you want lead generation? Increased your brands exposure? Boom on the sales front?
Have a goal from the start, and you’ll find your advertisements will be a lot more effective.
What does a successful campaign look like to you?
This point is heavily reliant on step three. Success can come in all different forms and meeting your goals should always be at the forefront of your mind.
At face value, at the end of a campaign you may be disheartened as you didn’t exceed in all the areas you hoped and set out for. When looking at the overall success of the campaign, you may discover that you fell short in some elements but exceeded in other aspects that you didn’t even factor in at the beginning.
The wins you had can be replicated for future campaigns and the areas where you fell short can be adjusted and improved – so, the next campaign you execute can be even better…
What is your budget?
This may seem like an obvious step; build a plan and chuck some money at it, right? This is up there with one of the most pivotal elements.
Discovering a tangible budget early in the planning stage will give you a great direction of where you are going. It will determine the duration of the adverts, platform you utilise, type of adverts and many more.
Your budget will aid you to ascertain realistic goals and timeframes of success. And while it seems simple to advertise on every platform to get “more exposure”, you may have to make hard decisions when a budget is decided.
