Blog Post

5 Mistakes to Avoid for a Successful Advertising Campaign

  • By Mark Baker
  • 27 Oct, 2016
two watch dogs keeping an eye on their digital advertising campaigns
Spending money on advertising can be a daunting task for those unfamiliar with the process. “How much should I spend?” “How do I create campaigns on the different digital platforms?” Questions like these are common, but proceeding without a clear strategy often leads to costly mistakes that may compromise your budget.

Here are some of the most common mistakes that can ruin an advertising campaign:

1. Not targeting the right audience

It is essential to know who your customer is and where they live to create a successful advertising campaign. Many companies make the mistake of assuming they should market their product to everyone, leading them to cast a wide net, which can burn through your budget at a rapid rate.

Thankfully digital advertising, such as search and social media advertising, allows for very precise targeting. You can customize your campaign’s audience by several demographics such as age, gender, language, and location. You can also create targeted audiences based on their interests and online behaviors, such as purchase behaviors or intentions, device usage and more.

The key is to use the many tools provided by the platform to ensure you spend money on reaching the right people—the ones who are likely to be interested in your offering.
   
2. Delivering an irrelevant message to your audience

If your ad creative does not speak to the audience you’ve targeted, even if the product is something they would benefit from buying, chances are they will not consume the ad. For most goods and services, a one-size-fits-all approach to your creative will not be a practical choice. Make sure there is a direct correlation between your visuals and messaging, and the target audience to ensure optimal engagement with your ad. And, make sure the message is delivered with original and quality creative.

3. Miscalculating your advertising budget

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when building your advertising campaign is creating an arbitrary number for your budget. If the data is available, one way to budget your advertising costs is to find out what the average advertising-to-sales ratio is for your industry and use that as a baseline for your spend. If this info isn’t available or if it isn’t possible financially, don’t be afraid to start small. With digital advertising, you can instantly adjust your budget according to what is or isn’t working. Grow it incrementally.

4. Incorrectly evaluating campaign performance

Often businesses tend to assess the success or failure of a campaign by comparing it to goals that are not directly aligned with the output of an ad. For example, an ad campaign promoting a Facebook page should not be tied to overall company sales. If you were to evaluate the campaign solely based on whether or not your company’s sales increased, it would not be an accurate reflection of whether or not the ad did its job—promoting your Facebook page. However, you could evaluate the effectiveness of that same campaign by looking at what percentage of people who saw the ad, clicked on it. That would tell you if the ad creative and the audience selection is appropriate or not. You could also look at what percentage of those who clicked on an ad, then liked the page. That would tell you how effectively the ad communicated what was offered and whether or not the Facebook page delivered on what was promised in the ad. These break-out metrics are known as Key Performance Indicators or KPI’s, a common term used in marketing.

You should define your campaign’s KPI’s at the very beginning of the ad campaign strategy process to ensure every component of your campaign can be measured and monitored. Make sure everyone on your team understands what they are and why you are using them to evaluate your campaign’s performance to avoid mismanaged expectations throughout the life of your campaign.

5. Not tracking the money you spend before it’s too late

Never adopt a set-it-and-forget policy when it comes to your digital ad campaign. Often, companies have the best intentions when setting up their campaigns, but then they walk away until the ad budget is spent. Later they realize that if they had changed course at some point in the campaign’s lifetime, they could have possibly received better results. Successful ad campaigns require constant vigilance. Be sure to go back early and often to examine what is working for your campaign and what isn’t. Make changes immediately.

In the end, building a successful advertising campaign is a process that requires, diligence, experimentation, and patience. What works for one business may not work for yours. By avoiding these five mistakes when planning your advertising strategy, your campaigns will be in a better position to meet the desired outcomes without breaking the bank.
Mark Baker

Mark Baker is a natural artist. Since starting his first business hand painting graphics onto vehicles in high school, Mark gained experience in the entertainment, sports, and retail industries before founding this company in 1993. Honest and pragmatic, Mark knows that anything can be accomplished with a great communication plan and creative thinking. 

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