Tag: paid

5 Ways to Convert Paid Ad Leads

As it becomes increasingly challenging to grow organic reach, more and more marketers are looking to paid ads.

Since this monetary model is by no means novel, that means there’s a crowded space for these ads. You want to ensure your dollars dedicated to pay-per-click (PPC) are getting their money’s worth.

Maybe you’ve written scintillating paid ad copy that speaks directly to your audience’s pain points. Maybe you’ve drafted a graphic that is the perfect balance between branding and intriguing. Maybe you’ve set your budget and ad parameters and are ready to go.

How do you get those paid ad leads to actually convert?

This, of course, is the challenge of paid marketing. You can do nearly everything right, but without clear direction for your audience to further interact with your paid ads, you’ve done little more than create a pretty picture.

To help you make the most from your paid ad dollars, we dive into the five best methods for converting paid ad leads.

5 Methods to Convert Paid Ad Leads

While the term conversion can conjure different meanings to different marketers, for the purpose of this post, we’re defining conversion as any desired action, whether that be purchase, form-fill, email capture, or simply a learn-more action.

Regardless of your current working definition of conversion, the following methods can help your paid ads convert, enabling you to reach your marketing goals.

Below, we break down five tried-and-true methods that can help your paid ads translate to valuable conversions.

1. Route Leads to a Chatbot or Messenger

As technological capabilities evolve, so do our strategies for lead conversion. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, increasing opportunities for chatbots arise.

In fact, it’s projected that chatbots will manage 85 percent of customer interactions in the near future.

These days, chatbots are built into many websites. Visit nearly any site, and you’ll be greeted by an automatically generated message asking you what you’re searching for and how the bot can help.

In addition to simply operating as a help feature, chatbots can be used as a tool to improve site visitor experience, not to mention completely changing the way brands communicate and interact with their existing and would-be consumers.

Since chatbots are infinitely customizable and can provide personalized responses, how consumers interact with your brand has changed drastically.

With successful chatbot addition to your marketing strategy, you can improve your customer’s journey through increased personalization and drive conversions through an interactive platform.

How can you incorporate chatbots into your paid ad strategy?

It’s easy: Instead of sending an individual who clicks on your paid ads to a classic web form, direct them to a chatbot. There, they can engage in a personalized, targeted conversation that can lead to the conversion you’re aiming for.

While simply having a chatbot is a great strategy to increase paid ad conversions, writing good copy for the bot can make a good strategy great.

Here are our top three tips for successful chatbot copywriting:

  • Sound conversational: Chatbots are not the time to flex your vocabulary. In fact, messages written at a third-grade level receive 36 percent more responses. Using simple and clear language is key.
  • Have a cohesive tone: Choosing the right voice for your chatbot depends on the tone of your business. Whether you’re fun or formal, be sure to mimic that style as you develop your chatbot’s responses.
  • Use a catching hook: You want your site visitors to interact with your bot. To ensure this interaction happens, use a compelling hook to catch their interest. Check out this example from Purple, a mattress company that excels at snagging attention through an emotional pull.
purple mattress chatbot supports paid ads lead conversion

2. Direct Leads to a Landing Page

Historically, paid ads drive to landing pages, and this isn’t a bad thing.

The trouble with landing pages occurs when they’re not optimized properly. You may have the most compelling paid ads on the web, but if your landing pack is lackluster, your conversion rates will be, too.

Below, we share our top five tips for making your landing pages work as hard as you do:

  1. Research user behavior: If you don’t understand how users interact with your page, it’s hard to understand what is and isn’t working. You can employ free tools that build a heat map on your pages, letting you better understand what your users are doing so you can tailor the layout to meet their movements.
  2. Identify pain points: Be sure to create copy that indicates you have a clear understanding of your audience’s problem—not to mention a clear, simple solution. When you lead with pain points, you’re that much more likely to intrigue your audience, getting them to sign up for that demo or join your email list.
  3. Provide value: Without fail, your landing page should offer some carrot to your audience. Whether that’s a whitepaper or a video, a webinar or a podcast, make sure your landing page offers your audience something they’ll find valuable (and find easily on your page).
  4. A/B test: Test everything. We mean it. Anything you can track the performance of, track it. The more data you have about how specific elements on your page are performing, the more likely you are to get very close to the ideal set of on-page elements that lead to conversion.
  5. Remove distractions: Less is more when it comes to your landing pages. Have a lot of great content? Good. Hold onto it—now is not the time to use it. As you build your landing pages for paid ads, be selective in what you include. There’s a singular action you want your site visitors to take. Don’t confuse that message by overburdening your page.

3. Direct Leads to Forms on Social Media

Another way to increase conversions from your paid ads leads is to drive direct leads to forms on social media. With 83 percent of marketers using social platforms to advertise, there are a lot of paid ads appearing on social.

How do you get your paid ads to translate into a conversion on social platforms?

By following best practices. Let’s take Facebook, for example. The social media giant reports over 2.7 billion active users per month. With that many active users, you know there’s a plethora of marketers.

To make your paid ads stand out in the crowd and actually convert, you can build forms into your paid ads on the platform. That way, users don’t have to navigate away from their social scrolling to, say, sign up for your newsletter.

To drive even more conversions via forms on social media, consider using these two best practices for incentivizing:

  • Share a discount code: Everyone loves a discount. To increase your paid ads conversions through forms on social, try offering audience members who take your desired action a unique discount code. This way, you’re not only converting, but you’re also building goodwill with your audience.
  • Host a competition: If offering a discount code doesn’t apply to your product or will reduce the perceived value, host a competition.

Both of these strategies allow you to deliver value to your audience while still achieving your conversion goals.

4. Route Customers to a Purchase Page

If your aim is conversions from paid ads, drive customers to a purchase page. This strategy is highly effective, as it considerably shortens the buyer’s journey, taking an individual directly from interest to purchase. By eliminating steps in between these two phases, you dramatically increase the likelihood that your ad will convert.

Clothing line Hello Molly uses Instagram paid ads to advertise its garments. If users click on one of the images, they’re taken directly to the purchase page for that item.

By driving directly to the page, you shorten the number of steps your potential customer has to take to convert.

What’s more, the consumer doesn’t need to leave the confines of Instagram. The entire sales process occurs in the app.

5. Direct Leads to Your Blog

While, at times, blogging may feel like a technique of the past, your blog should still play a vital role in your content marketing strategy.

In fact, blogs continue to outrank emails, books, and whitepapers as the most effective type of content, and if you’re not driving your paid ad leads to your blog, you may be missing out on a slew of conversions. After all, your blog is a hub of content that speaks to pain points and fills in knowledge gaps within your industry.

If your conversions are focused on asset downloads, you should definitely drive traffic from paid ads directly to relevant components on your blog.

paid ads - Hollo Molly example

How to Know Which Method Is Right for You

Feeling overwhelmed by these five options? Don’t be! Knowing which method is right for you is all about understanding the true goal of your overall ad campaign.

  1. Determine your conversion goals

    Think about what action you want your leads to take. Do you want their email address so you can send them your newsletter? Do you want them to download resources you publish? Do you want them to make a purchase? These are common conversion goals, though yours may be something else entirely.

  2. Decide where you want to direct users who click your ad

    You will most likely direct your users to a landing page, purchasing page, or a lead generation form.

  3. Decide which method is best for you

    Map out your goals with the strategies listed above and decide which will be most helpful for you to reach your goals.

    For example, if you’re hoping to increase whitepaper downloads, consider linking to a synopsis blog that includes a download option of the entire paper.

    If your goal is to increase purchases you should definitely drive your leads from paid ads directly to product pages.

Paid Ad Conversions FAQs

If you’re still not sure about how to convert paid ad leads, here are a few commonly asked questions to help guide you:

How Can I Encourage Paid Ad Leads to Convert?

To drive your paid ad leads toward conversion, be sure to align their destination with your conversion goal. If you’re looking to drive purchases, consider directing leads to a purchase page. If you’re looking to drive whitepaper downloads, drive to a blog. Regardless of the goal, be sure to send your leads to a location where they can take clear and direct action.

How Can I Incorporate Chatbots Into Paid Ad Strategy?

Incorporating chatbots into your paid ad strategy is simple and can result in increased conversions given the endless possibilities of this conversational tool. Instead of sending an individual who clicks on your paid ads to a classic web form, direct them to a chatbot. There, they can engage in a personalized, targeted conversation that can lead to the conversion you’re aiming for.

Which Paid Ad Conversion Strategy Is Right for Me?

Regardless of your conversion goal, be sure that the location you’re driving leads to that goal. When conversion and destination are aligned, the conversion process is compressed, making it easier than ever to achieve your conversion dreams.

How Can I Optimize My Landing Pages for Conversion?

Here are five keys for website optimization: A/B test, prove value, address pain points, remove distractions, and research user behavior.

Conclusion for Paid Ad Conversions

As the use of paid ads becomes increasingly ubiquitous, driving consumers to the right location to convert becomes even more important than ever before.

Clear direction is always important for online consumers, but it’s never more important than in the steps that lead to conversion. By having a clear and direct goal for your paid ads and aligning that goal with a landing location that correlates, your potential customers are that much more likely to become consumers.

When you pair the right content with the right process, you unlock the door to successfully converting paid ad leads.

If you decide you want to employ these strategies yourself even though you think they may be beneficial, let our agency know. We can handle the heavy lifting for you.

What’s the most successful conversion path for leads from paid ads that you’ve used?

How to Write Perfect Paid Social Media Marketing Objectives (With Examples)

Having a marketing plan isn’t enough for success. You need strategic marketing objectives to help you set, plan for and achieve your business goals. And you need to have them not just for your overall marketing plan but also for specific portions, such as paid social media marketing.

This guide will offer you a detailed breakdown of what marketing objectives are, what are the best practices for creating effective marketing objectives, and a few examples of what successful marketing objectives look like. 

We have also included tips, tricks, and strategies to make your marketing plan more efficient with tried and tested marketing objectives. 

What Are Marketing Objectives?

Marketing objectives are a set of trackable, measurable, clearly defined goals to help you expand your business. These can include, but aren’t limited to:

  • Profit-based goals: making sales
  • Growth-based goals: increasing subscribers, fans, etc.
  • Awareness-based goals: gaining unique visitors

Such marketing objectives often use a popular method of goal setting known as SMART. SMART stands for:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Timely

You should tailor your SMART goals to your unique situation, but here’s an example to get you restarted on your marketing objectives:

Smart Goal Structure

S – Specific: Visits, Leads, or Customers

Do you want to increase traffic, nurture traffic into leads, or convert leads into customers?

M – Measurable: Provide a Number

Decide on an exact number to measure and increase.

A – Attainable: Understand Benchmark

Research your past analytics to make sure the goal is realistic with your resources.

R – Relevant: Relates Back to Overall End Goal

Make sure each goal relates back to overall end goal.

T – Timely: Include a Time Frame

Pick a date that is realistic to reach your goal.

Why Is It Important to Set Paid Social Marketing Objectives?

When you launch a paid social media marketing campaign, it’s essential to start with solid marketing objectives so you create a strong strategy to meet or exceed your marketing goals. 

For example, if you want to increase your newsletter subscribers, focus on building a robust email sequence and craft marketing content in a way that should convince your audience to hit subscribe. Having this marketing objective clarifies your key goals and can help you build an effective social media marketing strategy. 

If you don’t have any marketing objectives, you may end up wasting time, money, and effort on the wrong marketing campaign (for example, increasing passive visitors instead of engaged subscribers). 

To better direct your resources toward building successful ad campaigns, you need to understand the types of marketing objectives you can set and what they mean for your business. 

10 Types of Paid Social Media Marketing Objectives

Marketing objectives are crucial to clarifying and meeting your business goals. This section is here to help you narrow down your choices and dig deeper into what each type of marketing objective looks like in practice. 

1. Marketing Objectives to Increase Brand Awareness

This is one of the most common types of marketing objectives. No matter how great your business is, if customers don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you. That’s why paid social media marketing objectives aimed at increasing brand awareness often come first, especially for new business owners. 

Like other marketing campaign metrics, these can be customized and measured according to your key business needs. For example, if you’re a new brand looking to increase brand awareness, you need to tailor your social ad campaigns to attract new visitors. 

Here are a few examples of what a brand awareness-based marketing objective could look like:

  • Increase social media visitors by 25 percent.
  • Improve page visits by 50 percent.
  • Increase the number of target demographic visitors by 20 percent.

The metrics to track these marketing objective plans are pretty straightforward. For instance, here is an example of keyword metrics tracked by Ubersuggest.

Your website’s analytics page will offer you all the details about your progress (or decline in growth) so you can adjust your marketing objectives and strategies accordingly. 

If you notice you’re falling short of the goals too frequently, it may be a sign you’re setting unrealistic goals. Try to reduce the number and see what happens. 

2. Marketing Objectives to Increase Repeat Visitors

Attracting new visitors isn’t enough; you must find a way to make them stay (and eventually convert). If you’re at that stage, you can create marketing objective plans to improve on-page retention and increase your number of regular visitors.

Here’s what that goal could look like:

  • Improve click-through rates from existing visitors.
  • Increase social media engagement among regular users. 
  • Reduce bounce rates to retain customers. 

This graphic by CXL explains how to calculate your click-through rates.

Fortunately, most websites today track visitors, making it easy to see if your marketing objective plan is working. If you find a particular metric is hitting the mark, regroup and consider what needs to be fixed. 

3. Marketing Objectives to Increase Subscribers

Once somebody starts visiting your page regularly, that’s a great time to ask them to subscribe to a premium level of whatever you offer. They’re already a free subscriber showing interest in your products, so they may be more likely to subscribe to your paid service than new users who don’t know or care about your business. 

Marketing objectives to increase subscribers could look like:

  • Increase subscribers by 15 percent over the next month. 
  • Reduce unsubscription rates by five percent over the next three months. 

You can track these metrics from your subscription services’ analytics page to see what is working and what needs to change. 

4. Marketing Objectives to Promote a New Product

When you launch a new product or service, you have an opportunity to create a timely and relevant paid social media marketing campaign. 

If you’ve just launched (or are planning to launch) something new, here are a few marketing objectives you can set:

  • Increase new product landing page visits to 100,000 per day.
  • Boost social media engagement related to the new product by 40 percent. 
  • Sell 25 new units per day through organic traffic. 

Such marketing objectives and strategies are often time-bound and only last for a few weeks or months, but you should track them like you would a long-term campaign to learn what works and what needs to be improved upon for the next time you run a short campaign. 

5. Marketing Objectives to Increase Sales

Now that you’ve launched your new product and successfully promoted it, it’s time to focus on increasing sales. Most companies across several industries think of increasing sales when they discuss marketing. 

Although marketing can serve several purposes, most businesses primarily use paid social media campaigns to boost sales, so this step is quite important. 

If you’re at a stage where you’re prioritizing sales, here are a few examples of marketing objectives aimed at boosting sales:

  • Increase conversion rates by three percent in the next three weeks. 
  • Connect with 25 influencers to increase social media sales.
  • Increase affiliate sales by 12 percent in the next month. 

These marketing objectives can be directly tracked by how many units or subscriptions you sell. We recommend keeping track of your results to know which marketing objectives and strategies work best for you. 

6. Marketing Objectives to Increase Revenue

Even if your sales have increased, it doesn’t mean your revenue necessarily has. If you notice you’re not meeting your revenue goals, it’s time to devise new SMART goals, such as:

  • Increase profit margins by 1.5 percent.
  • Reduce marketing costs by two percent per month. 
  • Bring down customer acquisition cost to $5 per new buyer. 

Here’s an example of how these marketing objectives can be tracked, explained through a graphic by Chorus.ai. 

7. Marketing Objectives to Optimize the Conversion Funnel

Once you’ve set practical marketing objectives and begun working on your paid social media marketing campaign, you may notice the customers still aren’t converting. Maybe you’re attracting ample visitors, but your repeat customers are low. Perhaps you have a growing number of subscribers, but your customer acquisition cost is too high. 

In these cases, it helps to set marketing objectives to optimize your conversion funnel. Here are a few examples:

  • Identify and fix one weak spot in the conversion funnel per month. 
  • Increase conversion by 15 percent by spending a fixed sum on marketing. 
  • Reduce customer acquisition cost by three percent per month. 

You can track these metrics by closely observing your conversion funnel. Note which step of your funnel is losing visitors and aim to fix that with one of these marketing objectives.

8. Marketing Objectives to Grow Your Digital Presence

Today, 2.14 billion people shop online, making digital marketing essential. If you have a successful brick-and-mortar business and want to expand your digital reach, this marketing objective could be right for you. 

Here are a few helpful examples of what digital reach marketing objectives could look like: 

  • Post four blog posts per month to drive audience engagement.
  • Increase social media followers by 25 percent.
  • Reach 150 new users daily. 

These marketing objectives can be tracked by recording and comparing your social reach. 

Most social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram offer free analytics to help you understand how your audience interacts with your content. Use this data to adjust your marketing objectives and strategies. 

9. Marketing Objectives to Reach International Audiences

If you’re launching a new product or service that could benefit users abroad, create a marketing objective to reach geo-targeted audiences. Once you’ve defined the demographics you wish to reach, you can set the following marketing objective plans:

Understanding international markets can be tricky, so you may have to experiment with marketing objectives and strategies before finding something that provides the best return on your investment. 

10. Marketing Objectives to Increase On-site Time

Once you have an effective conversion funnel that meets your sales, revenue, and engagement goals, you can look for ways to increase each users’ on-site time. The more time somebody spends on your page, the more they’re likely to come back and buy something from you. 

For this, you can set marketing objectives like: 

  • Reduce bounce rate by 4 percent every month.
  • Increase user reading time up to 30 minutes per visitor.

You can track how long visitors stay on your page through your website’s built-in analytics tool. Measuring your marketing objectives solely through on-site time can be tricky, though, as many people leave their tabs open or are too busy to give their full attention to your page. So, we recommend you don’t focus on this objective too heavily unless you’ve completed all the others we discussed above. 

How to Pick Your Paid Social Marketing Objectives

Now that you understand the 10 essential marketing objectives, it’s time to choose one for your company. 

  1. Consider your business goals

    When selecting a marketing objective, consider your business goals. Ask questions like: Do you need to increase sales, or should you prioritize social engagement?

  2. Get perspective

    Consider the entire team’s perspectives before honing in on one goal. 

  3. Narrow it down

    Narrow your options to the top three choices you can work with. 

  4. Test your goals

    Start with one to see what works and what needs to change. If your goals aren’t supporting your overall growth plans, tweak and try again.

  5. Repeat the process with new objectives

    Setting goals should be an on-going process, not a one-time deal.

Tips to Help You Meet Your Paid Social Marketing Objectives

If you want to increase the effectiveness of your paid social media marketing objectives, make sure you:

  • Periodically check in with your team members to make sure everyone’s on the same page. 
  • Track your progress toward SMART goals to identify problems and possibilities for growth.
  • Include external experts’ suggestions to improve your process.

FAQ about Social Media Marketing Objectives

This guide covered a ton, but you’ve still got questions. Here’s a quick FAQ to help you get started.

Can my business have more than one marketing objective?

How many marketing objectives you set depends on your business goals and planning capacity. Larger businesses with bigger teams may be able to plan and execute multiple marketing objectives and strategies at once. In comparison, newer businesses with smaller teams might perform better by working on one goal at a time. 

Who should set the marketing objectives for a successful social media ad campaign?

When you launch a new social media ad campaign, involve everyone in the decisions about marketing objectives. The leaders and managers should specify the big-picture goals, while the marketing team can dig deeper into the details of how to execute your businesses’ marketing objective plans. 

What are the most important marketing objectives?

Every company prioritizes different goals at different stages of its growth. Creating brand awareness and expanding your digital reach could be solid marketing objectives to aim for if you’re a new business. If you’re an established company, increasing sales and profits may better serve your key business goals. 

What to do if my business isn’t meeting any marketing objectives?

If you notice your company is consistently falling short of your marketing objectives, it’s a sign warning you to change strategies. If you’re significantly behind your goals, it may be better to change your marketing objectives entirely. Track your goal metrics, see where your plan is failing, and set SMART marketing objectives to improve accordingly. 

How often can you change your marketing objectives? 

For your marketing objectives to succeed in accelerating your business growth, they have to be effective and profitable. If you notice you’re spending increasing time and effort trying to meet your goals without seeing great returns, reconsider your marketing objectives and perhaps swap them for new ones. 

Social Media Marketing Objectives Conclusion

Setting SMART marketing objectives can truly change the way you reach your target audience and encourage them to do business with you. 

You need to be especially SMART about your objectives when creating paid social media marketing campaigns, as you’re spending money regardless of how well things go.

Marketing objectives help clarify your message and simplify your goals while making them more effective in the long run. 

Which marketing objective will you choose for your business today?

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How to Write Perfect Paid Social Media Marketing Objectives (With Examples)

Having a marketing plan isn’t enough for success. You need strategic marketing objectives to help you set, plan for and achieve your business goals. And you need to have them not just for your overall marketing plan but also for specific portions, such as paid social media marketing.

This guide will offer you a detailed breakdown of what marketing objectives are, what are the best practices for creating effective marketing objectives, and a few examples of what successful marketing objectives look like. 

We have also included tips, tricks, and strategies to make your marketing plan more efficient with tried and tested marketing objectives. 

What Are Marketing Objectives?

Marketing objectives are a set of trackable, measurable, clearly defined goals to help you expand your business. These can include, but aren’t limited to:

  • Profit-based goals: making sales
  • Growth-based goals: increasing subscribers, fans, etc.
  • Awareness-based goals: gaining unique visitors

Such marketing objectives often use a popular method of goal setting known as SMART. SMART stands for:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Timely

You should tailor your SMART goals to your unique situation, but here’s an example to get you restarted on your marketing objectives:

SMART goals structure related to marketing objectives

Smart Goal Structure

S – Specific: Visits, Leads, or Customers

Do you want to increase traffic, nurture traffic into leads, or convert leads into customers?

M – Measurable: Provide a Number

Decide on an exact number to measure and increase.

A – Attainable: Understand Benchmark

Research your past analytics to make sure the goal is realistic with your resources.

R – Relevant: Relates Back to Overall End Goal

Make sure each goal relates back to overall end goal.

T – Timely: Include a Time Frame

Pick a date that is realistic to reach your goal.

Why Is It Important to Set Paid Social Marketing Objectives?

When you launch a paid social media marketing campaign, it’s essential to start with solid marketing objectives so you create a strong strategy to meet or exceed your marketing goals. 

For example, if you want to increase your newsletter subscribers, focus on building a robust email sequence and craft marketing content in a way that should convince your audience to hit subscribe. Having this marketing objective clarifies your key goals and can help you build an effective social media marketing strategy. 

If you don’t have any marketing objectives, you may end up wasting time, money, and effort on the wrong marketing campaign (for example, increasing passive visitors instead of engaged subscribers). 

To better direct your resources toward building successful ad campaigns, you need to understand the types of marketing objectives you can set and what they mean for your business. 

10 Types of Paid Social Media Marketing Objectives

Marketing objectives are crucial to clarifying and meeting your business goals. This section is here to help you narrow down your choices and dig deeper into what each type of marketing objective looks like in practice. 

1. Marketing Objectives to Increase Brand Awareness

This is one of the most common types of marketing objectives. No matter how great your business is, if customers don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you. That’s why paid social media marketing objectives aimed at increasing brand awareness often come first, especially for new business owners. 

Like other marketing campaign metrics, these can be customized and measured according to your key business needs. For example, if you’re a new brand looking to increase brand awareness, you need to tailor your social ad campaigns to attract new visitors. 

Here are a few examples of what a brand awareness-based marketing objective could look like:

  • Increase social media visitors by 25 percent.
  • Improve page visits by 50 percent.
  • Increase the number of target demographic visitors by 20 percent.

The metrics to track these marketing objective plans are pretty straightforward. For instance, here is an example of keyword metrics tracked by Ubersuggest.

Paid social media marketing objective for apple

Your website’s analytics page will offer you all the details about your progress (or decline in growth) so you can adjust your marketing objectives and strategies accordingly. 

If you notice you’re falling short of the goals too frequently, it may be a sign you’re setting unrealistic goals. Try to reduce the number and see what happens. 

2. Marketing Objectives to Increase Repeat Visitors

Attracting new visitors isn’t enough; you must find a way to make them stay (and eventually convert). If you’re at that stage, you can create marketing objective plans to improve on-page retention and increase your number of regular visitors.

Here’s what that goal could look like:

  • Improve click-through rates from existing visitors.
  • Increase social media engagement among regular users. 
  • Reduce bounce rates to retain customers. 

This graphic by CXL explains how to calculate your click-through rates.

Click through rate calculation for paid social marketing objectives

Fortunately, most websites today track visitors, making it easy to see if your marketing objective plan is working. If you find a particular metric is hitting the mark, regroup and consider what needs to be fixed. 

3. Marketing Objectives to Increase Subscribers

Once somebody starts visiting your page regularly, that’s a great time to ask them to subscribe to a premium level of whatever you offer. They’re already a free subscriber showing interest in your products, so they may be more likely to subscribe to your paid service than new users who don’t know or care about your business. 

Marketing objectives to increase subscribers could look like:

  • Increase subscribers by 15 percent over the next month. 
  • Reduce unsubscription rates by five percent over the next three months. 

You can track these metrics from your subscription services’ analytics page to see what is working and what needs to change. 

4. Marketing Objectives to Promote a New Product

When you launch a new product or service, you have an opportunity to create a timely and relevant paid social media marketing campaign. 

If you’ve just launched (or are planning to launch) something new, here are a few marketing objectives you can set:

  • Increase new product landing page visits to 100,000 per day.
  • Boost social media engagement related to the new product by 40 percent. 
  • Sell 25 new units per day through organic traffic. 

Such marketing objectives and strategies are often time-bound and only last for a few weeks or months, but you should track them like you would a long-term campaign to learn what works and what needs to be improved upon for the next time you run a short campaign. 

5. Marketing Objectives to Increase Sales

Now that you’ve launched your new product and successfully promoted it, it’s time to focus on increasing sales. Most companies across several industries think of increasing sales when they discuss marketing. 

Although marketing can serve several purposes, most businesses primarily use paid social media campaigns to boost sales, so this step is quite important. 

If you’re at a stage where you’re prioritizing sales, here are a few examples of marketing objectives aimed at boosting sales:

  • Increase conversion rates by three percent in the next three weeks. 
  • Connect with 25 influencers to increase social media sales.
  • Increase affiliate sales by 12 percent in the next month. 

These marketing objectives can be directly tracked by how many units or subscriptions you sell. We recommend keeping track of your results to know which marketing objectives and strategies work best for you. 

6. Marketing Objectives to Increase Revenue

Even if your sales have increased, it doesn’t mean your revenue necessarily has. If you notice you’re not meeting your revenue goals, it’s time to devise new SMART goals, such as:

  • Increase profit margins by 1.5 percent.
  • Reduce marketing costs by two percent per month. 
  • Bring down customer acquisition cost to $5 per new buyer. 

Here’s an example of how these marketing objectives can be tracked, explained through a graphic by Chorus.ai. 

Marketing objective to improve revenue chart

7. Marketing Objectives to Optimize the Conversion Funnel

Once you’ve set practical marketing objectives and begun working on your paid social media marketing campaign, you may notice the customers still aren’t converting. Maybe you’re attracting ample visitors, but your repeat customers are low. Perhaps you have a growing number of subscribers, but your customer acquisition cost is too high. 

In these cases, it helps to set marketing objectives to optimize your conversion funnel. Here are a few examples:

  • Identify and fix one weak spot in the conversion funnel per month. 
  • Increase conversion by 15 percent by spending a fixed sum on marketing. 
  • Reduce customer acquisition cost by three percent per month. 

You can track these metrics by closely observing your conversion funnel. Note which step of your funnel is losing visitors and aim to fix that with one of these marketing objectives.

8. Marketing Objectives to Grow Your Digital Presence

Today, 2.14 billion people shop online, making digital marketing essential. If you have a successful brick-and-mortar business and want to expand your digital reach, this marketing objective could be right for you. 

Number of online shoppers for setting marketing objectives

Here are a few helpful examples of what digital reach marketing objectives could look like: 

  • Post four blog posts per month to drive audience engagement.
  • Increase social media followers by 25 percent.
  • Reach 150 new users daily. 

These marketing objectives can be tracked by recording and comparing your social reach. 

Most social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram offer free analytics to help you understand how your audience interacts with your content. Use this data to adjust your marketing objectives and strategies. 

9. Marketing Objectives to Reach International Audiences

If you’re launching a new product or service that could benefit users abroad, create a marketing objective to reach geo-targeted audiences. Once you’ve defined the demographics you wish to reach, you can set the following marketing objective plans:

Understanding international markets can be tricky, so you may have to experiment with marketing objectives and strategies before finding something that provides the best return on your investment. 

10. Marketing Objectives to Increase On-site Time

Once you have an effective conversion funnel that meets your sales, revenue, and engagement goals, you can look for ways to increase each users’ on-site time. The more time somebody spends on your page, the more they’re likely to come back and buy something from you. 

For this, you can set marketing objectives like: 

  • Reduce bounce rate by 4 percent every month.
  • Increase user reading time up to 30 minutes per visitor.

You can track how long visitors stay on your page through your website’s built-in analytics tool. Measuring your marketing objectives solely through on-site time can be tricky, though, as many people leave their tabs open or are too busy to give their full attention to your page. So, we recommend you don’t focus on this objective too heavily unless you’ve completed all the others we discussed above. 

How to Pick Your Paid Social Marketing Objectives

Now that you understand the 10 essential marketing objectives, it’s time to choose one for your company. 

  1. Consider your business goals

    When selecting a marketing objective, consider your business goals. Ask questions like: Do you need to increase sales, or should you prioritize social engagement?

  2. Get perspective

    Consider the entire team’s perspectives before honing in on one goal. 

  3. Narrow it down

    Narrow your options to the top three choices you can work with. 

  4. Test your goals

    Start with one to see what works and what needs to change. If your goals aren’t supporting your overall growth plans, tweak and try again.

  5. Repeat the process with new objectives

    Setting goals should be an on-going process, not a one-time deal.

Tips to Help You Meet Your Paid Social Marketing Objectives

If you want to increase the effectiveness of your paid social media marketing objectives, make sure you:

  • Periodically check in with your team members to make sure everyone’s on the same page. 
  • Track your progress toward SMART goals to identify problems and possibilities for growth.
  • Include external experts’ suggestions to improve your process.

FAQ about Social Media Marketing Objectives

This guide covered a ton, but you’ve still got questions. Here’s a quick FAQ to help you get started.

Can my business have more than one marketing objective?

How many marketing objectives you set depends on your business goals and planning capacity. Larger businesses with bigger teams may be able to plan and execute multiple marketing objectives and strategies at once. In comparison, newer businesses with smaller teams might perform better by working on one goal at a time. 

Who should set the marketing objectives for a successful social media ad campaign?

When you launch a new social media ad campaign, involve everyone in the decisions about marketing objectives. The leaders and managers should specify the big-picture goals, while the marketing team can dig deeper into the details of how to execute your businesses’ marketing objective plans. 

What are the most important marketing objectives?

Every company prioritizes different goals at different stages of its growth. Creating brand awareness and expanding your digital reach could be solid marketing objectives to aim for if you’re a new business. If you’re an established company, increasing sales and profits may better serve your key business goals. 

What to do if my business isn’t meeting any marketing objectives?

If you notice your company is consistently falling short of your marketing objectives, it’s a sign warning you to change strategies. If you’re significantly behind your goals, it may be better to change your marketing objectives entirely. Track your goal metrics, see where your plan is failing, and set SMART marketing objectives to improve accordingly. 

How often can you change your marketing objectives? 

For your marketing objectives to succeed in accelerating your business growth, they have to be effective and profitable. If you notice you’re spending increasing time and effort trying to meet your goals without seeing great returns, reconsider your marketing objectives and perhaps swap them for new ones. 

Social Media Marketing Objectives Conclusion

Setting SMART marketing objectives can truly change the way you reach your target audience and encourage them to do business with you. 

You need to be especially SMART about your objectives when creating paid social media marketing campaigns, as you’re spending money regardless of how well things go.

Marketing objectives help clarify your message and simplify your goals while making them more effective in the long run. 

Which marketing objective will you choose for your business today?

How to Use Semantic Search for Paid Ad Campaign Copy

Semantic search isn’t only for organic traffic; it’s for paid search as well. Understanding the difference between broad and exact match search is important, but semantics is all about the search intent behind a query. 

Google is focusing a lot more on search intent and keyword variants. Knowing the correlation between intent and semantics can help you narrow down to the perfect audience. 

How Does Semantic Search Work? 

What is semantics, and how does it apply to search? Semantics focuses on the search intent of a keyword and the thoughts and feelings that the person has as they search that keyword. 

It’s a complicated subject, and there isn’t a “black and white” set of steps to follow. A lot of context and concept is behind every search query, and many SEOs overlook this by thinking basic keyword research will solve all their problems. 

When it comes to semantics for paid campaigns, we’re talking about incorrect spelling, plurals, variants, synonyms, and other related words and phrases pertaining to the search word. 

If we understand what semantics is, we can understand how it impacts paid search. 

The goal of every advertiser on Google is to gain visibility for as many applicable keywords as possible. The problem is, no matter how much keyword research you put in on Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and SEMrush, you’ll never find all the keywords that people in your target audience are searching. 

This is where semantics come in. 

Google uses semantics in broad and phrase search to help find a wider range of searches and triggers that will match user intent and display your ad. 

Exact Match Vs. Broad Match in Semantic Search

To understand semantics, it’s important to know the difference between exact and broad match in Google ads. An exact match requires the searcher to input the exact keyword you’ve chosen to display your ad on. 

For example, if you used the exact match “wedding cakes,” the person searching must enter some of the following keywords into Google to display your ad: 

  • wedding cakes
  • white wedding cakes
  • chocolate wedding cakes
  • cheap wedding cakes
  • and so on

These are exact match keywords because they contain the phrase exactly as-is. As a result, this type of advertising doesn’t use semantics because it doesn’t allow the flexibility necessary to locate related phrases with the same search intent. 

Here’s another example: If someone searches for “cakes for weddings” or “weding cakes,” your ad may not display because Google thinks it doesn’t match your intention. 

Even though the search intent is the same, you’re not using semantics in your advertising and may experience a higher CPC because you’re targeting a much narrower audience than necessary. 

Using Semantics for Paid Vs. Organic Search 

When it comes to organic search, many SEOs and site owners like to find every slight permutation of a keyword and include it somewhere in their content. At one time, this was the best strategy. 

However, with the RankBrain update, Google started to implement machine learning and AI to understand the search intent and context of the search rather than rewarding the people stacking as many exact match keywords into their content as possible. 

The goal is to make the process of finding information on Google as natural and conversational as possible. 

For example, if you asked a friend, “Who is the richest person in the world?” they might respond, Jeff Bezos. 

If you then asked, “Who has the most money in the world?” the answer would be the same, correct? 

This factor should apply to Google search as well. Just because two people ask the same question differently doesn’t mean they should receive two different sets of search results. The question has the same intent, and the query demands the same answer. 

If we apply this to organic search, it would tell us that we don’t need to worry so much about getting every single variation of the keyword because Google will identify the similarities and help us rank for all the keywords with the same intent. 

On a different note, Google’s machine learning is using your habits as a searcher too. After searching for the richest person in the world on Google, I searched “most money” to see what that would bring. 

The number-one result on Google was still relevant to my original search. Since I didn’t click through to anything, Google is still scrambling to find an answer to my query. 

Why Should You Use Semantics for Paid Search? 

Google released data that tells us how important semantics are for paid search. Approximately 15 percent of daily searches are new searches that they’ve never seen before. If those 15 percent of searches have never entered Google’s database before, how could anyone ever pick them up using keyword research or competitive analysis? 

You can’t. 

When it comes to long-tail keywords, the goal is to grab as many of those as possible. However, thousands and thousands of search phrases never hit the keyword research phase because they yield no traffic, and most people would never include a keyword with no traffic in their content. 

Unless Google does it for you. 

This factor has become ever prevalent with the rise of voice search as well. Voice commands are much more common today than they were when released in 2011. Twenty-seven percent of the population uses voice search on their phones. It’s also believed that 62 percent of individuals would make a purchase using voice technology on their smart home device.

We all know that people do not speak the way they search on Google. Semantics play a major role in Google’s ability to take a voice search and translate it into accurate results. 

3 Steps to Use Semantic Search for Paid Ads

What can you do to capitalize on semantics? By now, we see the importance of semantics for paid search, but what should you do to ensure you’re reaching as much of your audience as possible?

  1. Worry Less About Keywords for Semantics

    We should all worry less about creating content around keywords and instead create content around topics. 

    The goal is to cover a topic as in-depth as possible, and the keywords will come naturally.

    A lot of SEOs talk about “silos” and “clusters.” These two strategies help you build out content in a way that increases site relevancy and boosts authority. By doing this, you’re showing Google that you’re an expert on the subject, and it should give you precedence over your competition. 

  2. Focus More on Intent 

    I’m always preaching the importance of search intent, but this has become Google’s bread and butter. It makes it more difficult for SEOs to game the system by stacking a bunch of keywords in their content. 

    When choosing keywords for a paid search, you want to focus on the thought behind the keyword and target the intent. Think about the queries that lead people to your website.

    What are they trying to do when they come to your site? 

    Are people there to learn something? Purchase something? Inquire about something? Once you’ve determined that, you’ll want to find keywords matching that intent. 
    In this image, the keyword “best deals on iPhones” has a different search intent than “best iPhones,” pictured below. While they both contain a similar phrase, the person searching is trying to accomplish different things. 

    Someone searching for deals is already in buy mode; they want to buy an iPhone and are looking for good deals. 

    Someone searching for the best iPhones may not have settled on the phone yet. They want to research brands, quality, read reviews, and learn more before making a purchase.

    These two individuals are at different steps in the buying process. 

    Understanding this can help get more people to your site and may even decrease your bounce rate because they’ll get more of what they bargained for when they land. 

  3. Don’t Ignore User Experience When It Comes to Semantics

    With the release of Core Web Vitals, we know that Google is paying attention to the on-site experience. Factors such as loading speed, load delay, and page layout are important. 
    Focus is shifting away from advertisers and affiliates and turning to the users. Google doesn’t care about how well you understand SEO and how many hours you spent on keyword research. 

    All they care about is that people get what they want on your site. If you’re giving people what they want, Google will reward you. If you’re not, they’ll reward your competition.

    For many years, site owners pumped out sub-par keyword-loaded content built to rank but ignored the people searching for those keywords. That won’t cut it anymore. 
    Work on improving your page speed, optimizing your site for mobile, and pay attention to bounce rate and session duration. These are all indicators of whether or not you’re choosing the right keywords and targeting the right audience. 

    If you find that certain paid ad keywords have a higher bounce rate, it could mean you don’t have the right search intent. Semantic advertising isn’t all about verbiage; it’s also about relevancy. You could have the best offer in the world, but it won’t mean anything if your site doesn’t function properly.

Measuring the Success of Your Paid Search Campaign Using Semantics

How can you measure the success of semantic search in paid ads? The most important metric you’ll want to track is the success of individual broad-match keywords. By finding out which words Google’s AI is displaying your ad for, you can determine whether you should continue advertising for that broad-match keyword. 

For example, if you’re advertising a site that sells iPhone cases, and you find that your audience’s search intent doesn’t align with the phrases your ad is displaying for, you might want to readjust or target something different altogether. 

Two other metrics that can tell you a lot about the success of your campaign are the bounce rate and average time on page. If you’re targeting the right audience and bringing the right people onto your page, they’ll likely stay awhile.

If you have a 90 percent bounce rate and an average time on a page of less than a minute, chances are people are landing on your site, not liking what they see, and going somewhere else. 

This could be a sign of a deeper on-site issue, but for this example, you might want to make sure you’re sending the right people through. 

semantics for google analytics dashboard

You can use tools like Google Analytics or the Google Ad dashboard to explore this data. 

Conclusion 

Much of this article will be great news for many of you. It means you don’t have to lose your mind on hours of keyword research anymore. By using broad matches and focusing on intent, you could pick up all the relevant keywords without having to identify them manually. 

If you need a little more help, we can walk you through the steps necessary to get your campaign up and running. 

The paid ad space is constantly changing and adapting to the digital environment, and we all have to jump aboard and roll with the changes. If we don’t, we risk letting our competition get ahead while paying more per click and receiving lower-quality click-throughs. 

Be sure to keep semantics in mind as you set up your paid campaigns and really think about what the individual is trying to accomplish when they type a phrase into Google. 

How have you used semantics to narrow down on your target audience?

5 Excel Tricks for Creating Paid Ad Campaigns

To create a paid ad campaign effectively, you need a solid strategy for organizing your data and tracking your ad performance. 

Excel spreadsheets can do just that.

While a spreadsheet might not seem like the most intuitive tool for managing your marketing efforts, there are many Excel tricks you can use to quickly streamline your data, track metrics, and improve conversions. 

There’s no need to be an Excel expert to master these tricks. All you need is access to a version of Excel and a desire to learn. 

Maybe you’re wondering if you should bother learning Excel if you already use other tools like CRM software or Google Analytics to manage your marketing campaigns. 

Honestly, you probably should. 

The humble Excel spreadsheet offers you a simple yet highly effective way to organize all your data from various project management tools in one place. Whether you want to use your spreadsheet for keyword research or you’re turning data into a bar chart, there’s an Excel trick to make your job easier.

Plus, you never know: You could end up at a company that still strictly uses Excel for these things!

With all this in mind, let’s look at using Excel to boost your paid ad or pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. 

Should I Use Excel or Google Sheets? 

Excel and Google Sheets aren’t the same thing. 

Google Sheets is a fantastic (and free) alternative to Excel. It’s not designed to handle the enormous data sets you might want to hold in Excel, such as keyword research, but it’s excellent for managing deadlines, analyzing customer relationship data, and filtering statistics to gain some key insights into your ad performance.

I’ll be using Excel to work through examples here, but you can, of course, use Google Sheets for many of these tasks if that’s what’s available to you. You can also check out Calc from OpenOffice since the functions on offer are very similar.  

5 Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns

When creating paid ad campaigns, you need to think about which keywords to use and bid on, how to boost your click-through rate, and how to increase your conversions once people land on your page. What’s more, you need the means to compare different ads within the same family to check for underperforming content. 

Excel, thankfully, can help you tackle all of these issues and more, so here are my top five Excel tricks you can use to design, track, and analyze your paid ad campaigns.    

1. Filter and Sort Key Data

As I’ve touched on, the goal of creating a PPC campaign is to get as many clicks and conversions as possible. How do you maximize your chances of success? You first need to choose the right keywords. 

If you use keyword research tools like Ubersuggest, you probably see hundreds, if not thousands, of keyword suggestions. Excel can help you sort through this data to identify the keywords you should be using. 

Depending on your campaign goals, you can filter the data based on factors including:

Say you’re creating a PPC campaign around video marketing. You input the keyword “video marketing” into Ubersuggest. When you click “View all keyword ideas,” you’ll see 342 suggested keywords and over 11,000 related keywords. 

How do you translate this into Excel? First, download a copy of the keywords by clicking the “Export to CSV” button:

Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns - Use Ubersuggest

Now, filter the results to only see the keywords most relevant to you and your campaign. To do so, load up the spreadsheet, head to the “Data” tab, and click the “Filter” option:

Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns - Use Filter Option in Excel

For our example, let’s filter the keywords based on SEO difficulty. Go to the column header and click the arrow. From the drop-down menu, uncheck the boxes for the irrelevant keywords. They’ll disappear from your search results so you can focus on the important keywords:

Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns - Filter and Sort Key Data

Once you’ve finished analyzing the data based on one filter, you can quickly switch to another using this Excel trick.  

You can also filter out “negative” keywords from your search results. Say you don’t want your PPC ad to appear in search results for “real estate” because you’re not targeting this audience. Click on “Text filters” from the drop-down menu, then “Does not contain.” Input the words “real estate” into the box. 

2. Use a PivotTable to Track and Compare Audience Demographics

The next Excel trick I’ll show you is how to create a PivotTable. 

What is a PivotTable? Think of it as a kind of interactive report. It allows you to analyze massive data sets and extract critical data to inform your decision-making process. Here’s what a PivotTable might look like:

Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns - Use a PivotTable

From a marketing perspective, PivotTables are invaluable. They can show you, at a glance, who is clicking on your ad and where they’re based. What’s more, if you’re running multiple ads, you can identify if certain demographics are clicking on one ad more than the others, and so on. 

In other words, if you’re a marketer trying to track your campaign’s success, a PivotTable could be your new best friend.

To use a PivotTable effectively, first identify your data source. You might use data from Google Analytics or another analytics tool. 

Next, import this data into an Excel spreadsheet. The easiest way to do this is by importing a CSV into Excel. To import a CSV into a new Excel workbook, simply click the “Data” tab, then click “Get External Data” and select “Text” from the menu options:

Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns - Importing data from CSV

Once you’ve checked the data moved over correctly, create your PivotTable. Include columns for demographic data such as location, age, and gender, and columns tracking metrics such as conversions and impressions.

Highlight the cells containing the data you’re interested in, then go to the “Insert” tab and click “PivotTable.” Confirm the fields you want to include to generate your table. 

Next, decide what data you want to include in your PivotTable. For instance, if you’re tracking audience demographics, have columns for data such as location, age, and gender. 

You also need columns for metrics like clicks, impressions, and conversions because you’re trying to track performance.

Finally, analyze the results and make whatever changes you need to increase your conversions and improve your PPC campaign success. 

3. Use VLOOKUP to Track Metrics

Do you want to combine two sets of data from different spreadsheets or tracking tools into a single sheet? Then you need to check out the VLOOKUP function.  

Essentially, VLOOKUP allows you to quickly combine a vertical column of data from one spreadsheet into another. Be aware: Both data sources must have at least one column in common, or this method won’t work. 

Say you’re looking for new keywords for your PPC campaign. You don’t want to duplicate keywords, so you’re looking to see if any of the new keywords you found are already on your existing keyword spreadsheet or PivotTable. 

You can use the VLOOKUP Excel trick to identify any genuinely new keywords and import them into your spreadsheet.   

First, identify the new column in your existing spreadsheet that you want to fill with fresh keywords. Then, select “VLOOKUP” from the “Formulas” tab.

Next, complete the VLOOKUP formula. You’ll need four things:

  • Lookup Value: This is the value that both data sets have in common, such as a keyword.
  • Table Array: Table array is the range of columns you’re pulling from. 
  • Column Number: The column number is what column number you’re pulling data from. For example, if you’re pulling data from the second column in your table array, the column number is “2.” 
  • Range: Finally, it’s best if you keep the range “FALSE” to only pull exact matches.

Once you complete the formula, the data sets merge.  

VLOOKUP is pretty technical, so check out the Office support page for more help creating your formulas. 

4. Use Graphs to Add Visual Elements to Your Ads

Visual marketing works. Visuals can increase audience engagement by up to 40 percent, and 40 percent of marketers believe that infographics were their most successful visual content.

When you’re creating PPC ads, it’s worth adding original graphics or data visualization tools, like bar charts or graphs, to potentially increase your click-through rates and conversions. Luckily, Excel can help you do this.

If you’ve already got a PivotTable, it only takes a few clicks to turn it into a chart. Simply click the “Analyze” tab, select “PivotChart,” and decide which chart type you want to use. That’s it!

Don’t have a PivotTable? Fear not. 

First, select the data you want to include in your chart, click “Insert,” then hit the “Recommended Charts” button:

Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns - Use Graphs to Add Visual Elements to Your Adds

Pick the design you like most and generate the chart:

Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns - Generate a Chart from Excel Data

The Microsoft support page has more hints and tips for customizing your chart. 

5. Save Time With Excel Macros

When you create paid ads, you often perform the same steps each time. Excel lets you automate repetitive tasks to save you time.

How do you automate these tasks? Through this neat little Excel feature called a macro.

Macros are essentially automated or recorded sequences. You “record” a set of actions you want Excel to automate, like keystrokes. When you need this action performed again, you simply run the macro, and Excel handles the rest for you.  

Well, there’s no limit to what you can use them for, but here are some suggestions for paid ad campaign steps you might automate.

  • completing keyword research  
  • generating new campaigns
  • converting data into PivotTables
  • building new templates

Setting up a macro should be a short process, though you can always check out the Microsoft help page if you need more guidance.

First, ensure you can see the “Developer” tab in Excel. From here, hit “Visual Basic” and then click the “Record” button. If you can’t see the Developer tab, just click the “View” tab and hit “Record Macro” there instead: 

Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns - Save Time With Excel Macros

Choose a name for your macro and then start recording. Once you click “OK,” Excel records every action you take on the spreadsheet until you hit “Stop Recording.” Now you’ve got a macro set up to use whenever you need it. 

Before you run a real and complicated macro, try setting up your own simple test macro to get a feel for how they work. 

Conclusion

If you’re a marketer, these Excel tricks can help you create, track, and manage your paid ad campaigns more effectively than before. There’s no need to be an Excel expert, either. All you need to know are a few simple commands, and you could be up and running pretty quickly. 

From keyword research to customer relationship management, Excel could be the tool you’re looking for. Once you’ve tried these Excel tricks a few times, you’ll probably wonder how you managed to run your PPC campaigns without them! 

If you need any more help with Excel, be sure to check out Microsoft’s Excel Community support page.

Have you used any of these Excel tricks for your paid ad campaigns?

How to Run a Breakeven Analysis for Paid Marketing

Starting a new paid marketing campaign is no easy feat.

There are logistical considerations, financial considerations, audience considerations, duration considerations.

Let’s imagine you’ve decided to start a new Google Ads campaign. You have a vague idea how much everything will cost, and you’re eager to get started.

Before you hit the green light on your new campaign, you need to know about your future profitability, particularly when your profits will break even with your costs.

Why does that matter?

At that point in your campaign’s lifespan, you’re primed to start turning a profit rather than existing in the red.

How do you determine that point?

By conducting a breakeven analysis.

What Is a Breakeven Analysis?

Whether you’re running a PPC campaign, adding a new advertising stream to your ongoing strategy, setting up an e-commerce store, or even opening a brick-and-mortar store, you need to conduct a breakeven analysis.

As we mentioned above, it lets you know when you can anticipate your endeavor to start paying off.

Beyond that, this analysis lets you know if your endeavor is viable or if it will be impossible to achieve financial success given your business model.

By helping you determine fixed costs (expenses like rent) and variable costs (like materials), you can set prices that reflect these expenses and predict when your business will move into the liminal space between expense and profit.

This stage of in-between profit and expense is referred to as the breakeven point (BEP), the stage when revenues equal costs. Once you’ve identified your BEP, assess all your costs from rent to labor to pricing structure to ensure you’re not spending any unnecessary money.

First, determine if your costs are too high or your prices too low to reach your BEP in a manageable timeframe.

Next, decide if your plan will be sustainable.

Not only does your BEP alert you to a specific event that should signal your move out of the red, but it also lets you know if you need to adjust your business spend.

Why You Should Do a Breakeven Analysis

The breakeven analysis is a hallmark of every good business plan. It allows you to determine cost structures and if you should move forward.

While it may seem like a breakeven analysis can only be completed before starting your business, this process can be helpful well beyond business launch.

By assessing and reassessing your business’ cost structures, you can forecast several different outcomes regardless of where you are in your company’s lifespan.

Benefits to conducting this type of analysis include:

  • correct pricing of product or service
  • view of profitability
  • provides information to adjust strategies for progressing
graph of break even analysis equivocation point

When Should You Complete a breakeven Analysis?

A breakeven analysis can be conducted at any time. However, there are four distinct actions that should trigger this analysis at your business:

New Business

As we mentioned above, conducting a breakeven analysis for a new business is vital for determining viability and pricing structure.

New Product

If you’re adding a costly new product to your business, you must calculate your BEP to ensure the potential gain is worth the cost.

New Sales Channel

Costs change whenever you incorporate a new sales channel. Whether those costs are contingent on the channel itself or the associated marketing expenses, be sure to conduct a breakeven analysis every time you add a new sales channel.

New Business Model

When you switch to a new business model, your costs can change drastically. To make sure the new model is sustainable, conduct a breakeven analysis.

2 Steps to Run a Breakeven Analysis

Hopefully, we’ve conveyed the value of this type of analysis, regardless of where you are in your campaign or business journey.

Below, we break down the steps to run an analysis.

Aggregate Data

Identify all the expenditures you foresee for your business and divide those costs into two categories: fixed and variable.

  • Fixed costs: These expenditures refer to any expenses that stay the same, regardless of your business’ success or failure. Categories include rent, labor (if full-time/set), and software subscriptions.
  • Variable costs: These costs refer to any expenditures that are contingent upon how much you sell. Consider materials, payment processing, labor (if part-time/fluid).

After you’ve identified all of these costs, decide on an average amount for each expenditure. These aren’t set in stone, but they should be within the realm of possibility for each commodity.

Compute

The formula for breakeven analysis is a two-step process.

  1. Calculate how many breakeven units are necessary using this formula: fixed costs divided by (revenue per unit minus variable costs per unit).
  2. Determine your breakeven sales volume by using unit sales price times breakeven units.

This final breakeven sales volume point allows you to determine if your business is sustainable if your goals are reasonable, and how to adjust your pricing and spend accordingly.

break even analysis formula graphic

How to Track a Breakeven Analysis

While your breakeven point isn’t the final word in the ultimate success of your venture, it’s still a milestone indicative of your business’ growth.

As you launch your campaign, store, or product, keep an eye on your breakeven analysis and adjust as revenue rolls in or unforeseen expenses occur.

To keep your analysis up-to-date, you could use Microsoft Excel to crunch the numbers for you.

Use Excel’s Goal Seek, a tool that allows users to define by either unit or price.

The Goal Seek function allows users to break out specific amounts and conduct auditable adjustments.

To complete this function, follow these five steps:

  1. Enter the terms seen in the image below step two in column A of your spreadsheet.
  2. Key in the below formulas to calculate revenue, variable cost, and profit
  • Revenue = Unit Price x Unit Sold
  • Variable Costs = Cost per Unit x Unit Sold
  • Profit = Revenue – Variable Cost – Fixed Costs
excel breakeven analysis
  1. Select Data > What-If Analysis > Goal Seek.
  2. In the open Goal Seek dialog box, please complete the four below actions:
  • Specify the “Set Cell” as the Profit cell (B7 in this example).
  • Specify the “To value” as 0.
  • Specify the “By changing cell” as the Unit Price cell (B1 in this example).
  • Select OK.
excel breakeven analysis

Using Excel’s Goal Seek functionality, you can plug and play different scenarios as they arise. This tool also allows users to forecast what-ifs, enabling planning for eventualities that may or may not occur.

Through experimentation, you can help prepare your campaign, business, or product for any eventuality.

What to Do If Your Breakeven Analysis Was Wrong

While a breakeven analysis can be highly beneficial for assessing the sustainability of your campaign or project, the formula is not without its limitations.

Unanticipated external factors can wreak havoc on your formula, resulting in incorrect projections and measurements.

These factors can include:

  • lack of demand
  • incorrect data
  • lack of nuance in the formula
  • time fluctuations
  • competitors

These five factors can dramatically impact your breakeven analysis.

In addition to these external forces, what if the result of the breakeven formula is unattainable for your budget?

Should you ditch that new advertising channel altogether or give up on your dreams of a brick-and-mortar store?

The answer is no.

Below, we break down three strategies to enact if your breakeven analysis shows unsustainability for your next venture.

Reduce Fixed Costs

Is there an opportunity to reduce your fixed costs? Take it. The lower your fixed costs can go, the fewer units you need to sell to reach your breakeven point.

Increase Your Prices

When you increase your prices, you reduce the number of units you need to sell to break even. A general caveat is to be mindful of the expectations that come with an increased price and what the market will realistically pay. The more you charge, the better product or service your consumers expect.

Reduce Variable Costs

Reducing variable costs can be challenging, but the more you can scale, the more you can lower variable costs. Regardless of what industry you’re in, consider changing your processes, negotiating with your suppliers, or changing materials.

Conclusion

Regardless of whether you’ve decided to start advertising on Instagram for the first time or are opening the doors to a brick-and-mortar store, the accuracy of a breakeven analysis is complicated.

To ensure you get as close as possible to the correct figure, be sure to get into granular detail on the costs and prices that correlate with your business.

In addition to possessing a thorough understanding of the costs associated with delivering your message or product to consumers, you must know the right price to charge for your product. Miscellaneous expenses add up; consider all possible variable and set costs.

To ensure you’re identifying the right price points for these items, analyze every product, service, or resource your business uses, produces, sells, or plans to sell. By organizing these items by profitability priority, you can further reduce costs and potentially reach your BEP sooner.

As you near the breakeven point, be sure to continuously monitor your performance through other metrics—breakeven analysis is just a tool in many that can help your business succeed.

What’s your best practice for identifying all variable and fixed expenses?

How to Run a Breakeven Analysis for Paid Marketing

Starting a new paid marketing campaign is no easy feat. There are logistical considerations, financial considerations, audience considerations, duration considerations. Let’s imagine you’ve decided to start a new Google Ads campaign. You have a vague idea how much everything will cost, and you’re eager to get started. Before you hit the green light on your …

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How to Optimize Microsoft AdCenter for More Effective Paid Campaigns

Gaining paid search footholds can be challenging, and once you’ve built a successful Google Ads campaign and watched it perform, it can be disheartening to reach the end of that campaign’s lifespan.

However, it doesn’t have to end there.

An excellent strategy for expanding the success of your PPC campaigns is to look beyond Google Ads to other platforms like Microsoft AdCenter, which allows you to advertise on Bing, Yahoo!, and other affiliate platforms.

It’s simple to translate your Google Ads campaign to the Microsoft platform because they have similar functionality. Using the same fundamental best practices, you can create more leads through PPC on an entirely new platform.

What Is Microsoft AdCenter?

Microsoft AdCenter is the centralized hub where advertisers go to buy sponsored ads on Bing or Yahoo!

Previously Bing Ads, the platform underwent a rebrand after combining forces with Yahoo!

While it’s safe to say that the majority of internet search traffic comes through Google, that doesn’t mean digital marketers should be sleeping on Microsoft AdCenter.

In fact, with a combined 30 percent market share of the internet’s search function, you’re going to want to add a visit to Microsoft AdCenter to your digital marketing itinerary.

Benefits of Optimizing Microsoft AdCenter for Your Ad Campaigns

Whenever you’re running a PPC campaign, you want to be constantly optimizing.

Why?

When you recalibrate through optimization, you increase your chances of reaching your target audience. This practice will not only increase your overall revenue but will also decrease your ad spend.

Microsoft AdCenter is no different. You want to continuously optimize your campaigns for success. While there’s much work to be done before launching a campaign, it’s arguable that the most valuable work is done post-launch.

With 1.03 billion unique users each month, Bing offers advertisers extensive reach.

However, without optimizing your campaigns, how can you ensure you’re reaching the right audience members?

Short answer: You can’t, which is why understanding how to optimize in Microsoft AdCenter is vitally important to your success on the platform.

Difference Between Microsoft AdCenter and Google Ads

As mentioned above, Microsoft AdCenter has similar functionality to Google Ads. However, the two PPC platforms differ greatly in five key areas: campaign-level control, closed variants, engagement rates, search partner targeting options, and ad scheduling.

Campaign-Level Control

Google Ads requires users to set the language, ad rotation, network, ad scheduling, and location settings at the campaign level. Groups are then restricted to these settings.

On the other hand, Microsoft AdCenter opens these options at the ad group level, permitting users to easily make change settings at any time, rather than having to build an entirely new campaign.

Closed Variants

After eliminating exact and phrase match keywords by enforcing a “close variant” target within Google Ads, the reach of exact and phrase keywords extended by 7 percent, including misspellings, pluralized terms, and grammatical iterations.

While Microsoft AdCenter does have an option to use the close variant query, it is just that: optional.

Increased Engagement and Conversion Rates

Users who engage with Microsoft AdCenter PPC ads have increased engagement with the selected sites and landing pages.

In fact, studies found that automotive search users who interacted with Microsoft AdCenter content had conversation rates 10-56 percent higher than Google Ads.

While this is clearly a particular audience subset, it is still indicative of increased interaction overall.

In addition to these factors, another difference emerges between Google Ads and Microsoft AdCenter.

As we discussed above, it’s simple to import your Google Ads campaign into Microsoft AdCenter. Despite this ease, there are considerable differences to keep in mind as you optimize your campaigns on each respective platform, including:

  • search partner targeting options
  • ad scheduling

While both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads have search partner networks (external sites that permit advertisers to expand reach on their platforms), the networks are notably different.

Search Partner Targeting Options

Unsurprisingly, Google boasts hundreds of sites in their search partner network. If you’re not seeing big returns on including this extended network in your targeted campaign, you can remove the function. Unfortunately, that removal is all or nothing—you can’t cherry-pick which partners you’d like to reach.

With Microsoft Ads, however, you can select which partners to reach, a key difference as you optimize your campaigns.

Ad Scheduling

While ad scheduling is a key component of any PPC campaign, different parameters for setting ad schedules apply when transitioning your Google Ads strategy to Microsoft.

With Google Ads, dashboard time is automatically set to the time selected upon account creation, so users need to update scheduled times depending on the time zone they’re trying to reach.

Microsoft Ads, however, allows users to set schedules based on the location of the target, making scheduling infinitely easier.

While these differences may not seem huge, they’re important to note as you begin your Microsoft AdCenter campaign.

Tips for Optimizing Microsoft AdCenter

We’ve already highlighted the importance of optimization; now it’s time to break down exactly how to optimize your Microsoft AdCenter campaigns.

1. Perform Keyword Research

If you don’t have a solid grasp on your keywords, now’s the time to start. By researching what terms apply to your purpose and audience, you can incorporate that language into your campaigns to ensure you’re reaching your desired audience.

2. Use Negative Keywords

When you include negative keywords in your campaign, you can exclude confusing or irrelevant terms from your strategy. This allows more accurate audience reach as well as reduced ad spend due to more precise matching.

3. Segment Your Campaigns

For data-driven PPC advertisers, segmenting campaigns into ad groups will allow you to make more intelligent optimization decisions. Segmentation lets marketers focus their message on different groups, which enables the collection of targeted metrics. Through a more segmented audience, you can tailor the message and receiver.

4. Use Ad Extensions

With ad extensions, you can add additional pieces of information about your business, including phone number, address, or a particular link. These free-to-add options can increase the visibility and utility of your ads.

5. Follow Ad Writing Best Practices

Strong, relevant copy is vital to the success of any PPC campaign. As you optimize your Microsoft AdCenter content, keep these best practices in mind:

  • Underscore the audience’s primary pain point: By speaking toward your audience’s primary pain point, you not only establish how you can solve their pain; you also establish that you understand their pain. This builds trust and connection between the advertiser and consumer.
  • Incorporate numbers or statistics: Historically, numbers work to grab reader attention. This was true long before the internet and will continue to be true as the internet evolves.
  • Utilize emotional triggers: It’s no secret that people react to emotional triggers. When you harness the power of emotion in your ads, you can almost guarantee a reaction from your audience. Check out how this law firm used emotion to advertise its services:
microsoft adcenter emotional ppc ad

6. Adjust Audience Type

Microsoft Ads provides users with several different types of audiences to use to ensure your ads reach the right group. You can adjust the type of audience to optimize your campaign and improve your reach.

7. Experiment With Dynamic Search Ads

These ads will automatically target relevant search queries formed from your website content. The ads are then dynamically created to react to those custom queries, reducing workload and increasing audience reach.

8. Use the Microsoft Audience Network

This audience marketing solution draws on Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) to better target your ideal audience. Be sure to take advantage of this Microsoft-exclusive offering, as it can drastically boost ad performance.

9. Use Universal Event Tracking (UET)

Yet another Microsoft-exclusive solution, you can use UET to view customer behavior after they interact with your ad. By placing a UET tag across your website, Microsoft gathers data that tracks goals and audiences with remarketing lists.

10. Set up Conversion Tracking

By setting up conversion tracking in Microsoft AdCenter, the platform matches you with relevant searchers across the Microsoft network. Conversion tracking also provides tools to optimize your campaigns for success.

Measuring the Success of Your Microsoft AdCenter Campaign

You’ve optimized your campaign throughout its lifespan, and now you want to know if it should be deemed a success or a failure.

Below, we break down three key metrics that will highlight your campaign’s overall performance.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This metric is key to understanding whether your ads are relevant to your customers. CTR is determined by dividing the number of clicks your ad receives by the number of times your ad is shown.

Conversion Rate

Strong conversion rates indicate that what you spend on clicks is returning to you in profits. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of total ad interactions tracked to a conversion in a given time period.

Cost Per Conversion

If you’re overpaying for conversions, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. This metric is determined by dividing the total cost for clicks by the number of conversions.

These three metrics provide a strong, foundational assessment of your campaign’s performance. While you can get lost in the intricacies of data, these figures always provide a clear result.

Examples of Great Microsoft AdCenter Campaigns

Although Microsoft AdCenter is filled with examples of great PPC advertising, here are three excellent PPC ads that used a unique feature of the platform for a successful campaign.

Maybelline

Maybelline uses a detailed breakdown in their paid listing to allow searchers to find exactly what they need. By segmenting by eyes, lips, mascara, and face makeup, the beauty company increases the likelihood that the searcher with clear intent will readily find what they need.

microsoft ad center - maybelline search

From You Flowers

These product ads rely on visuals to interest the searcher. By placing product images, pricing, and information along the side of the page, searchers have all the information they need instantly.

microsoft adcenter - from you flowers grid ad

Papa John’s

Ad extensions can go a long way for PPC ads. Pizza vendor Papa John’s made their listing as informative as possible, while also touting their success and visibility by sharing the number of monthly site visitors. This strategy not only provides helpful information like deals and pizza type options, but it also increases consumer trust through the sheer number of social visitors.

microsoft adcenter - papa john's visitor extension

While all three of these ads use extensions in very different ways, they bring more texture to the search engine results page (SERP), engaging the audience through images, increasing the immediacy of search success, and building consumer trust.

Conclusion

While both Google Ads and Microsoft AdCenter offer similar functionality, the options to optimize in Microsoft AdCenter are completely different.

Be sure to take advantage of Microsoft’s unique offerings and optimize your content and strategy through the Microsoft lens, ensuring that you get the most bang out of your advertising buck.

As you become more familiar with Microsoft AdCenter’s features, you could see your success rate rise as you optimize for target audience reach.

If you’re ready to find an agency partner to help you kickstart your paid campaign on Microsoft’s ad platform, let us know!

What’s the best Microsoft AdCenter campaign you’ve ever seen?

How to Leverage Testimonial Examples in Paid Campaigns

No matter how creative and convincing your marketing can get, when you are trying to sell to someone, they sense they are being sold to. Maybe they are primed for that sale and ready to buy, or maybe not.

On the flip side, someone telling a story about their experience with a brand and recommending it is a lot more convincing, especially when they aren’t paid to do it.

Testimonial examples can boost the social proof in your paid ad campaigns, adding authenticity to your online marketing. Adding recommendations from your customers or clients into your digital ads can help them stand out from the competition, stop people from scrolling by, and encourage users to click through to learn more about your brand.

Why Are Testimonial Examples Important in Paid Ad Campaigns?

There are many considerations when you are building paid ad campaigns: images, text on the images and in the copy, calls to action (CTAs), URL, click-through landing page, and more.

With all these constraints and necessities, you may be tempted to lean into the direct sell as you build your paid ad campaign. You may want to get to the heart of things and tell people why you are amazing and why they should buy (and where).

There are also a lot of reasons to slow down and think about incorporating testimonial examples into your paid ads.

Below are four reasons to incorporate customer reviews in your paid campaigns.

1. Testimonial Examples Improve Credibility

Whether your product works better than anyone else’s, or your prices just can’t be beaten, a skeptical customer is always going to wonder if it’s too good to be true when they see your ad. If they haven’t heard of you, they may wonder what you’re all about.

They might click to read more and explore, but maybe they’ll just assume you aren’t legit and keep scrolling past your ad.

Testimonial examples can change all that by adding credibility to your ad and your brand. Suddenly, there’s some proof you’re worth it.

2. Testimonial Examples Set the Stage for Great Customer Relationships

Customer service is a critical element for many buyers. In fact, Microsoft reports that as many as 90 percent of consumers consider customer service when thinking about working with a company.

It’s not just about a good product at a reasonable price; customers want to know they will be supported if they have questions about your product or service.

Testimonial examples give you a chance to share happy customers’ best experiences. They can speak to the customer service they interacted with or the overall experience working with your brand. This can help make potential customers feel more confident in their decision to use your brand.

3. Testimonial Examples Show Authenticity

People feel sold to all day and are always on the lookout for real authenticity. An Edelman report shows that nearly three-quarters of consumers actively try to avoid ads.

Testimonial examples give you the chance to tell real stories about real experiences. People love hearing stories, and when they feel connected to them, they may be more emotionally inclined to work with you.

4. Testimonial Examples Increase Conversions

While all the above reasons are great psychological reasons for using testimonials in your paid campaigns, at the end of the day, your marketing is about making more sales for your brand. Your paid ads should be designed to convert.

When people feel more confident about your offerings and feel an authentic connection with your brand, they are more likely to click through your ad and get to your landing page or website. From there, they are more likely to learn more and eventually make that sale. In fact, a VWO study found that using testimonials increased sales by 34 percent.

When it comes down to it, one of the best reasons to add testimonial examples to your ads is to make more sales.

How to Use Testimonial Examples in Paid Ads

Is it time to start incorporating testimonial examples into your paid ads? There are different ways to do this, but let’s talk about the high-level considerations for getting those testimonials into your ads.

1. Incorporate High-Quality Images

A photo of your product or people interacting with your product (with a quote incorporated in it) is a great way to get started with testimonials in your ads.

Make sure you use a high-quality image with a testimonial quote that is short and easy to read and grabs a buyer’s attention quickly. You want people to “get it” immediately.

Another way to use images to showcase your testimonials is a screenshot of reviews or star ratings from your website. Again, make sure you have the highest quality image you can so buyers don’t strain to read or struggle to understand what you’re trying to convey. Keep it simple.

More about this below, but remember to make sure you have legal rights to the reviews you are sharing. You can’t just go and copy them from anywhere without the consent of the reviewer.

2. Experiment With Different Formats

Testimonials from your happy customers can come in a lot of different formats. They might be text quotes, full case studies, or video testimonials.

As you build your marketing campaign funnel, you can experiment with different formats and integrate different types of testimonial examples throughout the various touchpoints of your ads.

For instance, you can use a simple, short quote in the images or text of your digital ads. That introductory text should really deliver a punch such as “This product changed my life” or “I couldn’t do my work without this service.”

You may want it to be pithy and draw the readers’ attention so they are interested in reading more.

You could also use video interviews or testimonials from customers or clients who love what you do. Even as these are more interactive and engaging, they should still be short and sweet, grabbing the viewers’ attention quickly.

3. Decide What Narrative You Want to Share

Carefully consider what kind of story you want your testimonial examples to share. Of course, they should be positive endorsements, but you will want to figure out the angle you want your testimonials to take.

They should be more nuanced than just “it’s a great product” or “you should buy it.”

Make sure your testimonial examples are framed around a compelling reason. Why is your product different from others? Why are your happy customers actually happy? Why would they want to tell others?

Imagine your customers talking to their best friends. What’s the reason they endorse your product? What brought it up in their conversation in the first place, and why are they excited to talk about it?

Especially if you decide to try some A/B testing or a variety of ad types to see what works best, building all your ads around a single narrative can help keep everything cohesive, improving the chances you connect with and convert your customers.

4. Make It Conversational

Testimonial examples in your ads can be a way to engage with your customers rather than just speaking at them. Keeping the tone of the ad approachable and conversational can add to the authentic nature of your message.

Maintaining a human touch is the key to this kind of message. Make sure it sounds like friends talking together, not a keynote presentation or a car salesperson.

One way to do this is to incorporate user-generated content, such as videos or photos. This kind of content brings honesty and a genuine feel to your ads.

Be careful to watch that narrative, as we discussed above, to ensure your message isn’t muddled. By setting those parameters for the message you are trying to convey, you can filter which user-generated content will be best for your paid ads.

5. Lead From the Ad to the Page

Keep the whole customer journey in mind as you put together your paid campaign using your testimonial examples. Remember that it’s not just about the ad; it’s about where they go next and what they will do once they get there.

You can use your ad to build intrigue and interest, then continue that story on the page you send them to.

Start with a short testimonial quote, an image of the customer sharing the testimonial, a quick video clip, or another snapshot that is going to get people interested.

Maybe it starts with a question such as, “How did this product change my life?” Perhaps it contains the first part of a testimonial and includes a CTA to tell the reader to click to hear the rest.

Your next step is to deliver. On the page, make sure you tell the next part in written text, graphics, a longer video, or a case study.

Don’t forget to make it easy to close the sale by including a buy link or another way to capture their information.

6. Don’t Overlook the Legalities

There are a lot of legal regulations surrounding how you use testimonials. This isn’t legal advice, and you should consult an attorney if you have specific questions. However, there are a few things to consider as you use testimonials in your ads.

  • Make sure you have permission from the people whose testimonials you are using. Don’t just cut and paste a great review you find out there.
  • Reach out and make sure the customer gives you written permission to use the review for marketing purposes. You can also include this information on your website or other places you are collecting reviews so customers aren’t surprised, but you should still get that permission.
  • Ensure your testimonials are accurate and typical for most buyers. In other words, don’t exaggerate or oversell using testimonials. Let’s be honest: this isn’t just about the legalities. It’s also the right thing to do. Your testimonials should be about honesty and authenticity.

2 Great Testimonial Examples

Are you still wondering what testimonial examples look like in a paid campaign? Here are a couple of examples to get you started:

Peet’s Coffee

testimonial examples - Peet's Coffee

Using a real review from a user of their coffee subscription services, this Peet’s Coffee Facebook ad catches your eye with its simplicity and the star bar.

It puts a positive review of the subscription service right in front of you. The review retains a bit of authenticity as well with the exclamations and random capitalizations. It isn’t “cleaned up,” so to speak.

The rest of the ad continues with specifics about the services and a quick video overview. Starting with the review, it draws you in to learn more about what makes Renee so happy.

Fabletics

testimonial examples - Fabletics

This Fabletics Facebook ad showcases a series of quick testimonial video snippets from happy wearers of their products. It’s instant proof these pants do what they’re advertised to do. They also show people actually wearing the pants, which is an added layer of authenticity.

You’ll notice the line on the bottom of the video that reminds people these people were compensated for the use of their reviews.

Conclusions

As you gather reviews from your customers, it may be time to start thinking about how you can incorporate them into your paid ad campaigns. Paid internet advertising can help you find your ideal audience and connect your brand with what your audience is looking for.

By setting up testimonial ads, you can bring social proof and realness to your brand, encouraging your audience to click to learn more and convert to customers.

Creating and maintaining your paid campaigns may be overwhelming to some. If that’s true for you, we can help. Our team of experts specializes in paid ads, as well as SEO and content marketing.

How will you be using testimonial examples in your next paid ad campaign?

How to Target Parents Through Paid Ads

One of the tricky parts about this is the fact parents are such a varied group. Forty percent of US households have at least one child under the age of 18, and that large group includes people from all walks of life.

The USDA estimates that it costs $284,570 (with inflation factored in) to raise a child through age 17.

To successfully target parents through paid ads, you have to deeply understand your target audience and use this knowledge to inform your marketing strategy.

7 Ways to Target Parents Through Paid Ads

Parents spend a lot of time online, meaning they may be pretty likely to see your paid ads.

For the first time, women in the U.S. are more often having babies in their 30s than their 20s. This means you’re looking at an audience with a lot of millennials who spend a great deal of time on social media. This is also the case with younger parents, and both groups use search engines to find answers to everyday questions.

The difficulty is not reaching parents; it’s targeting the right people with the right message at the right time. For example, there’s no point in reaching a teenager’s parent with an ad for baby formula.

You may have a rough idea about your target audience, but you’ve got to drill down further and figure out what matters to parents when targeting them through paid ads.

1. Incorporate Life Events

When we look back at our childhoods or those of our children, it’s often the big life events that stand out. There’s nothing wrong with turning 31 or 63, but it doesn’t quite carry the same excitement as your eighth birthday.

Events like birthdays, holidays, vacations, and graduations are important to children, and they’re equally important to parents. Even if money tight, most parents are willing to do what it takes to ensure their children have amazing memories of big moments.

For marketers, this is an opportunity to connect with parents. It’s not always easy to know what kids want, but through paid ads, your business can guide parents to the hottest gifts.

Targeting parents through paid ads - special occasions

This should play an important part in your paid ads, especially at important times of the year like late spring, when kids often graduate from high school. Parents often want to mark these special days with the right gift or by throwing a wonderful party, and your business should be looking to help make sure this happens via paid ads.

Paid advertising is about matching user intent, so make sure you know what products parents need.

2. Keep Your Audience’s Priorities as the Focus

What does your target audience look like, and what are its priorities?

Increasingly, parents are millennials. To target parents effectively, many brands have to understand how to target millennials.

Some key points that advertisers need to understand about millennials are generally:

  • tech-savvy
  • highly connected
  • seeking immediate gratification
  • caring about authenticity
  • collaborative

These characteristics are further enhanced by the fact that parents are busy. They want to use technology to help solve problems, and when they buy products, they need the experience to be fast and effective.

This means the experience you offer parents with your ads has to be perfectly optimized. Modern parents won’t waste their time on poorly optimized mobile sites or those with checkouts that take too long.

Paid ads should be backed up by a good user experience. If you get this right, it allows you to focus on solving your target audience’s pain points. Although parents have diverse needs, these often can be broken down into three categories:

  1. saving time
  2. saving money
  3. doing things more effectively

If your website experience and products can come together to help parents achieve this, then you may find you have success with your paid ads.

3. Back Your Products with a Guarantee

Parents are usually fiercely protective of their children, and your products or services need to fit into this narrative.

When we buy products for ourselves, we make a complicated buying decision. When parents buy for their children, this is amplified. They want to know the products are safe, can benefit their children, and are going to last. If your products don’t demonstrate this, they’re not going to be as appealing for parents.

One of the ways you can help assure parents about your products is by offering a guarantee. If you believe in your products and services, you should be willing to offer assurances to your customers, and which you can state in your advertising.

In my article, “5 Simple Tips to Creating an Unbeatable Facebook Ad Campaign,” my first tip was “your offer will make or break your campaign,” and your guarantee is a part of this. Without the guarantee, your offer probably isn’t as appealing to parents.

Parents have to trust you and your products if they’re going to let your brand into their children’s lives.

4. Develop Trust

As I’ve mentioned, many parents are now Millennials who are very tech-savvy, connected, and collaborative. When it comes to making sales, this means you need to be able to create a brand people can trust. One of the most important aspects of this is social proof.

The stats behind online reviews are impressive:

  • 93 percent of people read online reviews before buying a product.
  • 91 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
  • Customers are likely to spend 31 percent more at a business with excellent reviews.

Reviews play a big part in modern consumer decisions, so you need to have a process in place to make sure you’re getting them. Once you do, you can use social proof to show parents that other parents have bought your product and had great experiences.

Parenting can be challenging, and there are many products out there that promise a lot but fail to deliver. Naturally, parents are eager to avoid such products, so a good review from a fellow parent can go a long way.

how to target parents through paid ads with reviews

Of course, building this trust is based on you offering value for parents. If you’re doing this, you should take every opportunity to showcase it.

5. Be Informative

Children don’t come with a manual, and even if they did, following it would be nearly impossible. Naturally, parents look to authoritative sources to help them with their parenting—59 percent of parents say they have found useful parenting information on social media in the past 30 days. Your business may well be perfectly positioned to offer this information.

Targeting parents through paid ads doesn’t just have to be about your products. It can also make use of your knowledge.

Rather than just offering a quick solution to a problem, you can use your expertise to explain the reasons for the issue and offer advice.

For example, if a child struggles to organize their homework schedule, you can give parents tips about how to help their child become more organized rather than pushing your time-keeping app. You can naturally work your product into your resources, which begins to create a relationship with the reader.

Millennial consumers have grown up with internet marketing, and they’ve become skeptical about advertising. Using gimmicks doesn’t work with this demographic. It’s about offering value. The way you can do this is by showing your expertise and helping your target audience solve problems.

Your paid ads should have a collaborative feel to them, where you’re working together to make parenting easier, more affordable, and more effective.

6. Go Deeper With Your Targeting

What does a parent look like? It’s impossible to answer this question because they rarely look the same. There are so many different demographics within this audience:

  • parents of newborns
  • parents of teens
  • first-time parents
  • parents of multiple kids
  • two-parent families
  • single parents
  • young parents
  • older parents

The list is endless, and this is a good thing for marketers. If you can narrow down your target audience and understand who’s most likely to buy your products, you can target parents using relevant content.

For example, being a first-time mom is very different from doing it the second time around. First-time moms search for products in different ways than second-time moms, and they look for different things.

Through Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, you can reach particular audiences. Make the most of this by working on your buyer personas.

7. Reach Parents When They’re Searching

Parents are exceptionally busy people. They’re often balancing bringing up a child with full-time employment and everything else that comes with life.

For example, due to work and daily schedules, parents may search for products late at night.

Understanding when parents search the internet can allow you to target them better and make your campaigns more effective.

Dig into your Google Analytics and find out when people are using your site and making purchases. Another great step is to ask parents about how they shop through surveys. People are often willing to answer quick questions, giving you great insights into how to target parents through paid ads.

Conclusion

It can be tricky to target parents through paid ads because they’re such a diverse group. Parents of teens are looking for very different things from parents of newborn babies, and your advertising needs to recognize this.

However, there’s one thing parents share: a desire to do the best for their children. To successfully advertise to parents, you need to understand how your business helps them with this.

By being there for parents on important days, guaranteeing your products’ safety, and helping them with high-value information, you could build relationships that bring in sales. The better you understand your target audience, the easier this should be.

Are parents a key demographic for your business? How do you reach them?