10 Advertising Tips for Effective Digital Ad Campaigns

Most businesses will see positive ROIs with ad campaigns given they learn the basics. That's why you'll often hear to reinvest 10% (or more) of the revenue back into advertising efforts.

It's hard justifying advertising when there are safer alternatives. 10%+ is "make or break" money for a small, up-and-coming business. It's also nothing to scoff at when your budget is massive.

What can you do to improve ad outcomes? Follow the advertising tips and tricks outlined on this list!

We've got a lot of great insights to take your advertising to the next level. By its end, turn advertising efforts into one you have no qualms throwing 10% of your revenue at.


1. Research Your Audience

Every great campaign starts by targeting the true audience. Otherwise, money gets wasted on placing ads to those who don't care about your offers or brand.

Try these when uncovering your audience:

• Find similarities in your followers and customers
• Run reports from site analytics, getting user info
• Poll your audience, extracting audience data
• Look at the competition, seeing who they're attracting

You'll want to align your advertising with this ideal customer. If needed, create a profile and build campaigns using it central to your decisions. Otherwise, have marketing professionals help decipher your data to build out this audience.


2. Create (or Leverage) an Ad Strategy

Align goals and resources by choosing which ad strategy you'll run. For beginners, try the 'message' strategy in getting your name out there.

You should also consider items like:

• Where you'll advertise
• Who controls the campaigns
• How ads get implemented

Think of the big picture and outline the strategy best suited to your business intent. Leave a bit of flexibility in the plan, too, for unexpected elements. And, go off what's worked before but with the notion it's digital.


3. Gather the Best Ad Tools and Resources

Ad tools make the advertising experience enjoyable. They also cut down on wasteful investments while boosting what's working.

Check out tools like:

• Ad Platform: Facebook Ads Manager
• Ad Creative: Adobe Spark
• Ad Landing Pages: Optimizely
• Ad Research: WordStream

You could combine popular marketing tools alongside ad campaigns, too. A social media management tool could help reveal your audience. A video editing tool turns essential for creative media and graphics!

Start small when investing in tools, getting only what you need. Then, adding to your toolbox as campaigns show a positive return.


4. Create an Advertising Swipe File

A swipe file is what we call all the stuff collected on the competition. It's a database of what they're doing that we find interesting. It also includes what works for competitors and what doesn't.

These are very easy to create:

1. Go through and screenshot + save ads you deem great examples
2. Repeat this for things you find inspiring or creative
3. Save everything in a folder and make it accessible to the team

It's a bit like making a collage, in fact.

You can piece together headlines, copy, and creative. You could remix headlines you thought were neat.

One-up the competition with their copy and creatives. It's a powerful way to get right into running an effective campaign.


5. Do an 80/20 Offer Assessment

Should you advertise every product or service offered by your business? Of course not, it would be a colossal waste of resources!

Instead:

1. Pull up your sales records and reports for the last year
2. Determine which were your best selling and profitable offers
3. Select one or two of the best items from the best-of list

This is a basic 80/20 process of finding your best offers. These are the offers that make the most money and impact. These are also the offers usually well-supported and prime to perform better with an ad push.

You could find these offers through alternative methods, too, like:

• Polling your audience and customers, seeing what they love
• Checking comparable products to competitor's best sellers
• Going with an explosive trend, one which you could support

However you get there, this will give your ads a wonderful focus. You will find it far easier supporting the ad campaign, too, knowing you're starting strong.


6. Write, Rewrite, and Test Headlines

The headlines are one of the biggest hooks of advertising. This is what gets attention and convinces its recipient they should stick around.

Crafting great headlines is a skill — one you can learn:

• Refer to your swipe file and what's worked with competitor campaigns
• Look back at some of the greatest ad headlines and remix them
• Hire a professional copywriter to craft amazingly catchy headlines
• Check out some of the many "headline examples" lists and roundups

You can go any which way with headlines. They can offer a direct statement like what a person can save if they buy the product. Or, overwhelm people with emotion, having them feel closely connected to the product.

The formula for making great headlines? It's simple:

1. Brainstorm and write a hundred headlines
2. Do it again, writing more headlines and building off your efforts
3. Testing the best ones to a small audience, and making it even better

Save these headline ideas even if you don't use them. Why? Because you never know if one gives inspiration!


7. Make It About Benefits, Less About Features

People want to know... what's in it for me?

You will attract more people by selling the benefits over the features.

For example:

• It's not about how fast it is, it's about how it saves your precious time
• It's not about how you save money, it's about your new lifestyle

You can convey this throughout the ad from headline to link:

• Tone it and use words that make the offer relatable
• Talk about what it's like to own the product
• Use imagery that makes people want the experience

Discover the best features by asking your audience. They are quick to tell what drew them to the product and brand. You can then amplify those points in the advertising copy and creative!


8. Create and Stick to a Realistic Budget

There are two items to consider:

• Up-front costs
• On-going costs

The up-front costs tend to draw the most attention. People often give up before starting because they have yet to see the returns. If you can get ads started and get a taste of it, then up-front costs aren't a biggie.

The on-going costs? That's where you'll need to get savvy.

Don't:

• Let campaigns run without monitoring them
• Let inexperienced users dictate the campaigns

Do:

• Set realistic budgets for long-term performance
• Use expert services to handle the tedious ad work

Check into Google Ads Services as a way to save on your ad campaigns. These ad services maintain and optimize digital ad campaigns. This means you're not wasting money and other resources on failed attempts.

You can use them to create new campaigns and landing pages (see below). 


9. Use Fantastic Landing Pages

Imagine experiencing an impactful ad and wanting to learn more. You click the link, excited about what you'll discover. Yet, you're greeted with a website that's clunky and unattractive.

That's no good.

Your landing page needs as much — if not more — attention as the ad campaign. It needs continuity in its message and presentation.

Think of the landing page as an extension of the ad:

• Repeat creative elements and features
• Mirror the content tone and wordplay
• Fulfill your promise made in the ad on the page
• Don't break the person's trust via bait-and-switch

Build these pages reusing assets from the ad campaigns. You could use your site's templates, too. Otherwise, check out landing page themes and services. 


10. Test Everything (Again and Again)

Read these three bullet points and commit that you'll do them:

• Test the campaign
• Test everything again
• Test it a third time

A little repetitive, sure, but crucial for finding success with digital advertising.

In testing, we're looking for that 80/20 sweet spot like we did with our headlines. We are cutting out ads that don't work and boosting resources to those that do. 

So:

1. Pull up ad data, analytics, and reports
2. Assess which hit your metrics and goals
3. Test the ads with new creative and copy
4. Compare it to the older version
5. Use the ad variant that works best
6. Repeat

Spend money running these campaigns to get real-world data. Otherwise, you could run small scale tests using polling and niche platforms. This is where you'll leverage A/B testing and transform ads into massive wins.


Get More Advertising Tips and Tricks

The advertising tips and tricks in this post will carry your attempts for a good while. What happens when you've exhausted these strategies? How can you take your advertising to new levels of positive ROI?

Here are a few parting suggestions:

• Follow the experts and learn everything you can from them
• Learn from your failed campaigns and build on what works
• Pass off what you can't handle to the professionals

Of course, check out the business tutorials and guides on our site, too. Get active with the community and work together in mastering advertising!