By Nigel Agius

Love them or hate them, ads are the key to marketing. It’s how you increase brand exposure, improve engagement, and get new customers. The world of eCommerce ads is a strange and complex one – but with years of experience I know how to help! Here is the key information you need to know to boss your ad campaigns…

It’s all in the planning

Before you delve into the world of ads you need to do your research. Knowing your audience is key before you start setting up your campaigns. Yeah, I know we bang on about target audience a lot, but I promise it’s important!  

Different types of people use different platforms so it could inform your decision on where you focus your attention. It can even affect the type of creative and messaging you use. These elements and tailoring to your target audience can have a huge impact on the initial data you will see.

…but how?

I wouldn’t tell you how to do something without giving you all the information! Here’s how to find that all-important target audience before you set up your campaigns. 

Prior to testing ads, link Google Analytics to your site, and get a better understanding of who your demographic is. Analytics will give you information such as gender, age groups, country, device used – even their general interests! Then, once your campaign is launched, test more than one of your demographics from Analytics and optimise your budget to shift towards the best performing range of demographics. Simple as that!

Let’s get testing!

The importance of testing different types of ads can not be emphasised enough! Let me phrase it differently; how quickly do you want to see success? If you’re launching with one type of ad and just hoping you get it right – you won’t receive the best results. Try launching at least 3 different types of ad routes and then A/B test these to see which are resonating the most with your target audience. Remember, with A/B testing only tweak one small element on the ad copy or creatives at a time in order to get the fairest results.

You may be asking; which elements should I test when running ad campaigns? Let’s make it simple with this handy checklist…

• Platforms
• Placements
• Creatives
• Messaging
• Demographics
• Interests

You got it? Now go get testing!

Make sense of the letters

There are a few statistics that are important to keep an eye on when your ads are set up. They consist of abbreviations that all sound the same and are easy to forget. I’ve broken it down for you…

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CPM – Cost per Mille (thousand). The cost per 1,000 impressions. This is super important as an expensive CPM will give you a spike in all the other top-of-funnel metrics.

CPC – Cost per Click. If this is above industry average (2.5%, it means that your creatives or messaging are not resonating well with the audience you’re targeting.

CTR – Click Through Rate. If this click through rate is below industry average, this also means that not many people are being intrigued by your ads. Next step? Create improved content for the audience.

CPA – Cost per Acquisition. Simply put, this is how much you’re spending for 1 paying customer. One of the most important metrics, this can be make or break.

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Let’s talk social platforms

Facebook and Instagram are the top two platforms that most companies usually focus most of their budget on. They have a HUGE amount of users so you have the potential to reach a large number of people.

However, depending on YOUR company’s demographic, you may get better results running ads on other platforms such as LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest and Reddit. I’ll say it again – target audience is important here!

The main mistake to avoid

When creating your ad campaign, one of the most common mistakes I see is businesses copying what competitors are doing. By all means, you need to do your competitor research, but this is only to see what you could be doing better. Key takeaway? Be better, not the same.

Over to you

Now you’re an ad campaign pro, it’s your turn to get on those ads. The two key things you should remember – audience and testing. After that, you’re on your way to creating some killer campaigns. 

Still feel like you need some help? Favoured has you covered! We have campaign experts at the ready, to transform your ads. All the way from creatives to analysis, we can optimise your campaign so you can see the best results. Get in touch and see how we can help.