The rise of digital marketing has revolutionized how businesses advertise their products and services to prospective clients. With technology finding its way into the marketing world, businesses have moved from the good old days of placing ads in newspapers and magazines and now have ads all over the internet. This has had a net positive impact as businesses can now reach more people than before.
However, it has also had an impact on the budgeting market and companies now have to closely monitor their advertising costs to effectively evaluate the outcomes of their campaigns and achieve the ROI for running ads.
This can present a challenge for small businesses looking to stay profitable without sacrificing the benefits of using ads. If you run a small business, here are seven effective tips on how to lower your ad costs.
1. Create Audience-Specific Ads
As an advertiser, you need to create criteria that will help you specify your audience as accurately as possible. By narrowing down your audience, you can significantly lower competition with your audience. You should run your business based on the fact you are competing with other businesses so you should only bid on audiences you really want to reach.
You should modify your ads strategy to suit a specific demographic, region, and group of interested people. This way, you can create more click-to-click traction without breaking the bank.
2. Pick the Right Placement
By default, your ads will appear within the ecosystems you choose. Picking platforms where you want to display your ads allows you to eliminate those that do not perform well while costing relatively more. Most platforms have a management tab where you can access analytic data on how your ads perform.
You can narrow down the results to a specific period for a more detailed insight. On some platforms, you can access in-depth data on ad reports to understand how different types of content compare across placements. This gives you more information on the best places to publish your ads.
3. Test Campaign Objectives Before Moving Forward
The success of a marketing campaign depends largely on how clear your goals are from the beginning. While you may want to let more people know that your business exists, another business may incline more towards advertising a new promotion aimed at increasing organic website traffic.
With a good understanding of your goals, you can effectively optimize your ads. This can help get more engagements on your ads while increasing your CPM at the same time. It is advisable that you focus on brand awareness or reach an objective if you are solely looking to send ads to people’s pages at the most affordable cost.
4. Schedule Your Ads
Technology has gotten better over the years and businesses now have the freedom to choose when to show their ads. Once you identify your ideal target audience, you can research the hours when they are most active and more responsive and schedule your ads for this time. Choosing optimal hours to reach potential customers significantly enhances cost per desired results.
On Facebook, for example, you can find the best periods to show ads by checking the ad reports and setting the parameters to find out when you get the best results for your ads. Historical data offers great insight into letting you know when you will get the best results for your ads.
5. Consider Using Videos
Research shows that the human attention span is declining to record lows. For business, this means your audience may not have enough time to read through blocks of text when browsing through a webpage.
On the other hand, video viewership has increased steadily making videos a more potent tool compared to other types of content. Videos have an average engagement rate of 6.13% which can increase the relevance of your ads in the long run and cut costs.
6. Consider Working With Professionals
Running ads can be a tricky affair to an inexperienced team. And even if you have a highly skilled marketing department, the cost of maintaining an in-house ad management team is much higher than outsourcing your needs. That is where ad experts like Claire Jarrett come in.
An ad consultancy service provider can identify areas necessary for optimization and schedule an effective ads strategy. They can analyze keywords, help identify competitors, and refine your overall strategy to increase the chances for success.
7. Update Your Ads
Advertising fatigue is a real thing and updating your ad text regularly is a great way to overcome this. However, most businesses tend to ignore this. Once you publish your ad, you forget to track how often it runs. The result is customers getting too used to the ad, or you getting tired of your ads.
Ideally, you need to report regularly on the conversion metrics. This will help you identify the exposure range of the part where it gets tired. The ad reports will indicate the measurement items when approaching this point and suspend the ad for some time.
Endnote
There is no universal strategy when it comes to running ads. However, you can create an effective strategy using these tips to cut costs and improve results. Managing ad costs can be daunting but you can get your audience to value your campaigns and convert them into paying customers by mastering the art of ads.