When you start to look into this subject, more than likely you are bombarded with article upon article about all of the different ways that you can improve your current ads. In fact, you may have even ended up here that way! Hopefully, I can provide a bit more insight into this topic than other places have.
First, you may want to get a brief refresher on what online advertising or marketing means. One place to start could be here, https://www.ama.org/pages/what-is-digital-marketing/, although it is hardly the only place out there. Rather, I find that it sums up what you may want to know before you continue reading today!
What will we be discussing here, then? A variety of topics, of course, but mostly the intricacies of how virtual marketing operates. This includes SEO (search engine optimization), ad tracking, and more. So, if any of that sounds like it could be relevant to you, do be sure to stick around!
While I am sure this comes as no surprise, it does need to be said: the king of advertisement right now is social media. It is pretty much impossible to ignore the fact that campaigns done via these mediums get more attention, clicks, and press than other ones do at the moment. In fact, it has pretty much entirely usurped other ways to advertise such as commercials or billboards.
Those still exist, obviously, but studies show that they are much less effective than they used to be. Naturally, that means that most businesses have shifted their attention to the methods that do net profits and customers instead. Social media does appear to be where that trend is heading, but how does it work?
You see, there are a few ways in which brands can market themselves over social media. An obvious one is to create a profile page for themselves and a have a representative making posts for them and interacting with customers. This could be in a variety of fashions, such as posting promotions and coupons or answering customer service inquiries.
Additionally, a company could decide to hire an influencer to advertise for them. Depending on the size of said influencer’s audience, this could be an expensive venture, so do be cognizant of that. With that being said, though, it is demonstrably quite effective.
This is hardly the only way to effectively market over the internet, though. While I have placed it at high importance in terms of the current landscape of digital marketing, you can employ other methods. Keep reading to learn about them.
If you have not heard of this phrase before, it really is your lucky day – search engine optimization is a huge part of how the internet operates. So, if you want to start tracking your ads more precisely, this is something that you should become intimately familiar with. Allow me to explain.
When you plug in a word or phrase into your search engine of choice, there is an algorithm behind the scenes that determines which results that you see first. Now, most of the ones at the top are paid advertisements (and are noted as such), which is certainly an option that you can take. You can even utilize artificial intelligence to track how many clicks that you get with that method to determine if it is netting you a profit or not.
Indeed, you can do that for pretty much any of the options that I am explaining today, so be sure to keep that in the back of your mind as we get through the rest of them! When it comes to SEO, though, the goal is usually not to use the pay-per-click option. Instead, you try to “play” the algorithm to a certain extent.
While it does sound rather complicated, I promise you that it appears much more intimidating than it actually is in practice. The first step is to determine what key word you want to design your advertisements around. Essentially, this is going to be what you want to show up high in the search results for.
Obviously, it will vary depending on what sorts of goods or services that you are looking to sell or attract attention for. Some research will probably serve you well here, so that you can figure out what your competitors are using and what phrases are searched most commonly on the engines. Again, you can employ AI to assist you with this if you want, as it can ease the burden of work.
Why Track Your Ads?
So, you know that you can track your ads. Why would you want to, though? What is there to gain from doing so? These questions are certainly understandable. You can find some of the answers on this page, but there is a lot more to know as well.
Primarily, the goal when tracking ads is to determine which marketing campaigns are working well (garnering clicks and conversions at a profitable level) versus which ones are not (the money sinks that are not achieving results). Keeping an eye on this data manually can be a real pain, though, which is probably why a lot of businesses do not pursue this sort of practice.
However, with the advent of artificial intelligence programs, you can have this process automated to a certain extent. Of course, we probably do not want to trust everything to do with the marketing to an AI, but when we can make a process easier for ourselveswithout jeopardizing quality, there is really no reason not to take advantage of such a resource.
Some businesses just prefer not to use them, though, and I can certainly respect that. Once you acquire your data, however you decide that you want to do so, the analysis begins. Here, you can critically examine all of your campaigns and compare them in terms of their cost and benefits. Often, this is referred to as cost-benefit analysis, if you have heard that phrase before!
Look to see which of your campaigns is garnering the most clicks. However, going beyond that, you can also figure out which is obtaining the most conversions. What is a conversion? Well, it is when the customer on your website does whatever action that you desire from your advertisements and marketing.
Most of the time this means that they purchase something, but it can also include signing up for a newsletter or email service (amongst other actions, as well). When they perform that action, it can be considered a successful conversion. Keeping track of this can be a bit trickier than clicks, but it is well worth it in the end.
Naturally, AI programs can help with this as well. If you have it track which ad that the initial click came from, and then the conversion as well, you can get a better idea of which campaigns are getting your business more of those sales or sign-ups. Naturally, this is a very useful tool and can help you to design your future marketing plans as well!
At the end of the day, tracking ads does take a bit of work. Even if you have artificial intelligence gather the data for you, at some point you will need to perform some analysis. However, having it gathered and being able to look at it all at once can make the process a lot easier.
Once you isolate what is working and what is not, you can help your business to grow and become more successful by improving your marketing strategies and thus campaigns. It may not seem like a big deal, but as I mentioned, the internet really is where most of the advertisers and the consumers are right now. It only makes sense to move with the coming tide, so as you consider your next moves, I hope that some of my words here have been able to resonate with you at least to some extent!
