Your Digital Advertising Check List - MGR Blog

If you’re relatively new to digital marketing or simply would like to have a single source of information to follow while you create your first advertising campaign, the list below is just for you.  Follow these basic steps and you’ll be be ready to develop new campaigns for your customers in very little time.

CREATE YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING ACCOUNTS

When establishing a digital marketing strategy, you want to run ads across platforms where your audience spends their time. One platform will not meet all the needs of your business. Having a mix of advertisements across Google, Facebook/Instagram and LinkedIn will allow you to be most effective and efficient with your media budget.

Depending on the type of products or services that you want to promote as well as your target audience, you will want to allocate your budget to reflect your particular needs.

Google Ads Account

Getting started with a Google Ads account (formerly Google Adwords) is easy. You simply need an email address and website for your business to get started.

Head over to ads.google.com to get create your account.

Facebook Ads Account

Reach one of the world’s largest communities by setting up a Facebook Page and creating an ad. All you need is an email address and Facebook account (Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger).

To get started head to facebook.com/business.

LinkedIn Ads Account

Once you create a LinkedIn profile and a LinkedIn Page, you can use advertising to reach your customers on the world’s largest professional network.

Make your way to business.linkedin.com to start running ads.

 

INSTALL PIXELS AND TRACKING TAGS ON YOUR WEBSITE

Now that your accounts are set up, and your data is connected, it’s time to better understand your audience. Advertising pixels can be installed on your website to connect your data with the first-party data of each advertising platform, allowing you to gather anonymous insights about people who visit your website including demographic and interest information.

Additionally, begin to track the performance of your advertisements and what actions users take on your website. Gaining these insights is what enables you to better target your advertisements and see a return on your advertising investments.  Each channel has its own tracking tag.  Let’s take a look at the most relevant ones.

Google Conversion Tracking

By installing the Google Pixel on your business website, you will be able to measure actions that visitors take — whether you are looking to measure site conversions, phone calls, or more.  Google’s tracking tags are probably the more complicated to install from all of them, however, Google also provides detailed instructions and installation options that are easy to follow.

Instructions for Set-Up

 

Facebook Pixel

Create and install the Facebook Pixel on your website to measure the effectiveness of your advertising. Ensure you are reaching the audiences that are most likely to take action, learn about your audience demographics and interests, and measure conversions across mobile and desktop advertising.

Instructions to Install

 

LinkedIn Insights Tag

Power conversion tracking, understand website audiences, and website demographics for your LinkedIn ad campaigns. It’s quick and easy to install. Unlocking robust campaign reporting and information about your website visitors.

Instructions for Getting Started

 

DEFINE YOUR OBJECTIVES

Any great advertiser must have a clear understanding of the objectives of their campaigns. Are you trying to increase the awareness of your business or product? Are you trying to increase website visitors? Are you looking to increase sales?

By identifying your objectives, your business can implement a journey-based advertising strategy. Journey-based advertising is a concept that advertisers use to create advertisements that are helpful, relevant, and targeted at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Brand Awareness Objectives

If you are a new business, or simply want to raise awareness for your products and services, establish brand awareness objectives. These objectives include reaching and engaging your ideal audience.

Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand or product. Brands with high brand awareness are generally referred to as “popular.” Establishing brand awareness is extremely valuable when marketing and promoting your company, especially in the early stages of your business. Brand awareness helps foster trust, creates an association, and build brand equity.

Measurements : Reach, impressions, and views.

Acquisition Objectives

Many acquisition objectives are established around lead generation. Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers into prospects for your business. It’s a way of warming up potential customers for your business.

Acquisition objectives are established based on audience actions. Do you want your prospects to call you, visit your website, take an action on your website, or visit your location?

Measurements : Calls, website visits, conversions, website purchases, leads, and in-store visits.

 

DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCES

Once your technology is in place and your goals are established, start to build your target audience within each ads account. Instead of being hyper-focused, consider a larger audience segment. This will allow you to reach a larger audience that can be focused over time.

For example, you may want to reach people who are interested in visiting your store. You know they live in a 50-mile radius of your store, they are between the ages of 25-35, they are interested in professional basketball.

These targeting inputs are too narrow for you to reach the right customer. Broaden your targeting by running ads in a 250 mile radius of your business, to anyone interested in basketball.

This tactic will allow you to reach a potential audience you’d be missing out on with hyper-targeting. Each advertising network will be able to make updates to your advertisements based on the performance of your ads. Allow the advertising network to find your audience for you and spend your money efficiently.

Define Your Audience Segment

To build your audiences in your Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn Ads accounts, think about the characteristics that define them, like age, gender, interests, job title, etc., and what keywords they may search for. Hubspot provides this resource to see all the ways you can define your audience on Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn.

 

ANALYZE YOUR CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE

With many other campaigns running in your marketing strategy, it can be hard to make time to make adjustments to your tactics frequently. That’s why Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn have provided the tools to advertisers to not only run campaigns but improve them.

Measure Your Results

Each morning, log in to your advertising accounts and view the performance of your ads. Based on the goals and objectives you established, are your ads effective and efficient?

What is your average reach, click-through rate, and conversion rate? Once you become familiar with these KPIs, determine which advertisements are performing above your average and which advertisements are performing below average. Once you are able to make that determination, you can make adjustments to optimize your spend.

Optimize Advertising Performance

A unique benefit of digital advertising is your ability to make adjustments along the way. Digital ads are not a set-it-and-forget-it marketing tactic. Unlike outdoor or print ads, digital ads can be adjusted at any time.

Once you are able a clear understanding of how your ads are performing consider various optimizations.

Optimize Facebook Ads: When optimizing your Facebook ads, consider adjusting your campaign objective, revising your bid strategy, changing your targeting, or updating the campaign landing page on your site.

Optimize Google Ads: Google offers various resources to optimize your advertising performance. When making optimizations consider the keywords you are targeting, your ad copy, your ad extensions, and bid modifiers.

Optimize LinkedIn Ads: Whether you are getting started or an advertising expert, visit LinkedIn Marketing Solutions for a library of resources to improve your campaign performance. Consider making adjustments daily to ensure that your ads, targeting, and landing page are relevant and

 

OPTIMIZE YOUR PERFORMANCE

For marketers who are more advanced in advertising strategy and tactics, below are some resources from each advertising channel to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns today:

Explore Advanced Google Ad Features

Discover various campaign types, learn more about each tool, and read about customer success stories.

Read More

Guides for Advanced Advertisers on Facebook

Whether you’re acquiring new customers for a mobile app, advertising your in-store products, or using look-a-like audiences to optimize your bids, read these advanced guides for Facebook advertisers.

Read More

Your Guide to Advanced Targeting and Optimization on LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities remains one of the differentiators of their advertising solutions; Armed with advanced targeting and optimization best practices, you can more effectively reach decision-makers on the world’s largest professional network.

By following the above steps, you should be able to manage any type of digital marketing campaign for your clients.  If you have any questions or need assistance with your campaigns, our MGR Team of experts is always ready to help.

Thank you for reading.  Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR).

Sources: Hubspot, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn