If you’re running a paid search campaign or a display ad campaign, you probably already know how online advertising works. You create an attractive ad, and potential clients click on it. The ad takes them to your website or landing page, where you convince them to buy, call, subscribe, or perform some other desired action.
Simple, right? All you should need is a great ad that attracts attention, and you’ll be set. However, it turns out there’s a lot more to online advertising than just creating an eye-catching ad, which is why many businesses turn to digital marketing agencies to optimize their online paid advertising campaigns and improve their returns.
Optimizing your online advertising involves three key components: content, consistency, and analytics. Keep reading, because we’ll break down each of these components below.
Great Ad Campaigns Start With Great Web Content
As we mentioned above, the goal of online advertising is to lead potential clients to your website so you can convert them into actual clients. A great ad might make users click through to your site, but if the landing page where they arrive looks subpar, you’re going to see a high bounce rate and a low conversion rate.
Here are three elements of effective web content that help keep users on the page and encourage them to take the desired action.
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Well-Written Content
How many times have you come across slapdash, poorly written web content that was borderline painful to read? Even if you can understand what the writer is saying, unprofessional content doesn’t instill confidence in a company’s brand and products or services. Quality content is crucial for decreasing bounce rates, establishing you as an authority in your field, and developing overall brand awareness.
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Readability
Several elements come together to create content that is easily scannable and helps users find what they need. When optimizing your page for readability, it’s important to use:
- Headings
- Bullets
- Whitespace
- Short paragraphs
- Concise wording
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Relevance
You can serve up an attractive ad and a well-written landing page, but if the content on that page isn’t relevant to the user, they’re not going to stick around. You need a clear connecting thread between the ad and the landing page. Not only does relevance affect whether users stay on your page, but it will also determine if they see your ad at all. We’ll discuss this in more detail in the following section.
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Consistency in Content is Key
You’ve optimized your website content, paying special attention to your landing pages for paid advertisements, and you’ve also created an enticing ad. You’re all set, right? Not quite.
Content is still critical now that you’ve moved on from designing the landing pages to creating the ad. Developing consistent content across the two messages is crucial to the success of your campaign. Here’s why.
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Quality and Relevance Scores
Ad services such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads rank your advertisements based on how relevant they are to a person who sees them and how likely that person will be to click through to your ad’s landing page. If the content in your ad doesn’t correlate with the content on the associated landing page, the ad gets penalized.
The scores from the ad services determine where your ad ends up in paid search results. A lower score will result in a lowered ranking and potentially a higher cost per click. And if you try to increase your clicks by creating a vague or misleading ad, your ad’s position will fall further, and users who might otherwise have clicked through to your site may no longer see the ad at all.
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Matching Ad Messages With Unique Landing Pages
So, how can you receive higher quality and relevance scores? The best way to boost your scores (and create content that is relevant and useful to your clients) is to create dedicated landing pages for each ad campaign you run. Ad-specific pages ensure that the messages in both the ad and landing page match up and provide relevant information to the user. In some cases, creating unique landing pages for ads can increase conversion rates by 200 percent or more.
The Importance of Analytics for Online Advertising
Once you’ve launched your online advertising campaign and supported it with well-written and consistent webpage content, it’s time to start looking at your ads’ performance. An in-depth understanding of analytics can make all the difference for the success of your online ads.
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Optimizing Future and Current Messages
Your ads’ analytics data can help you tweak various elements of your current and future advertisements to improve performance. Key metrics to watch from your ad analytics include:
- Keyword performance
- Engagement
- Target audiences and personas
- Bounce rate
- Cost per click
- Reach
However, to get the most out of your paid advertising analytics, you’ll need to understand how to navigate ad analysis software and interpret the results. This analytical know-how is another reason why outsourcing your ad management to a digital marketing agency can improve the results you’re getting from paid online advertising while freeing up your time.
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Troubleshooting: When Performance is Subpar
If your online advertising performance isn’t as successful as you expected, there’s probably a flaw in your ad. Maybe you targeted the wrong keywords or linked to a landing page with inconsistent content. Troubleshooting your ad can feel like a daunting task, and the process is often tedious and time-consuming. But analytics will make the process easier by helping you pinpoint where you went wrong so you can make targeted improvements.
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Let LaFleur Create Cost-Effective Online Advertising Campaigns for Your Business
Our team of digital marketing experts at LaFleur can manage all aspects of your online advertising campaigns. Let our content specialists help optimize your website and ad copy and leave your ad layout and performance in the experienced hands of our designers and campaign specialists. At LaFleur, we do it all.
Contact us to learn more about how working with our team can help you optimize your online advertising performance and improve your conversion rates. Give us a call today at (888) 222-1512 or fill out our online contact form to get started.
References
Smith, Brad. (2018, September 18). All about AdWords quality score —and how to improve it fast. Hootsuite. Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/adwords-quality-score/