We have all had this experience: you are thinking or talking to someone about something and then the next day you see an advertisement for that exact same product pop-up on the side of your screen. This phenomenon inevitably freaks you out, but you eventually move on with your day, not realizing that your experience was no coincidence but rather a carefully thought out online advertising effort.

Online advertising comes in many different forms through various platforms, however, the underlying strategic process is very similar. Whether you are an online marketer or want to create an ad for your small business or organization, our guidelines will help you get started in the right direction.

In order to make a successful investment in these various platforms, it is imperative to have a strategic plan in place so the correct people are seeing your ads. The easiest way to do this is to set a specific goal. Your goal should not simply be “get more sales” but rather “have our San Francisco location’s sales go up by 5% by having users call the location” or “get more sales from women ages 18-32 by driving them to our online store”. By narrowing down your goal you have a better chance of having a successful campaign. You can then run multiple campaigns that have specific intentions at the same time, all working towards your ultimate goal, for instance “getting more sales”. Setting a goal will also help guide you in creating the physical ad. Your goal will dictate how you phrase your copy, the tone, and the visual content.

Our Recommendation: Use numerous specific ad campaigns to reach your larger goal.

Now that you have your goal and your ads created you must decide your campaign’s timeline and budget. Refer back to your goal: will your ad be a general continuous ad to raise brand awareness or is it specific to a sale or short-term promotion? Depending on your goal and messaging you will want to time your ad accordingly. For instance, you should not be running your Christmas themed ads past December 25th. By thinking through the timing of your ads in tandem with your goal, you will be able to make the most out of your budget and not waste ad dollars on an unnecessary ad running longer than it should. There are various tools built within online advertising platforms that estimate how many people will see your ad based on the targeting you have created and your budget’s reach. We have seen successful ad campaigns with a budget of $15 to a budget of $1000 and more. Wherever your budget falls, make sure that you are hitting the sweet spot that will make your investment dollars worth it.

Our Recommendation: Figure out your budget and run your ad for a longer period of time if possible. We ran two ads with the same budget, one for 48 hours and another for a week and the ad that ran longer reached more people for the same amount of money!

This is the most important step and it is often overlooked. Due to the nature of online advertising, there really is no one formula for creating a successful ad campaign. It is imperative that you look back and note what is working and what is not so you do not keep putting money toward a campaign that is not performing well. This requires patience as you may always have to keep changing components of your ad to find exactly what works for your company. If you do not look back and analyze you may get lucky and create a very successful ad campaign, however, most likely you will be investing in a campaign that is not performing to its full potential. Our previous recommendation of extending our ad time was learned because we took the time to look back and analyze the various decisions we made on the ads.

Our Recommendation: Change one component of your ad at a time to see what is actually making the difference. If you change too much at once you will not know which factor made the difference – whether it was good or bad!

Online advertising is always changing and evolving. With many online companies now also changing their privacy policies to be more aligned with customer privacy, the future of online advertising may look different. However, understanding online advertising is the first step in keeping up with an ever-evolving industry and using it to your advantage. If you would like to implement online advertising or would like to discuss this article further we are happy to chat!