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According to Marketing Charts, digital advertising budgets increased by 50% in 2018.
More advertisers are spending more money on digital advertising.
That's right. More is very much the name of the game.
But, as more and more advertisers start to find their feet in the digital advertising world some corners are cut.
Let's have a look at 5 common digital marketing mistakes SME's makes and how to avoid them.
1. Not Spending Enough Time with Targeting
With digital advertising, there is a goldmine of targeting options for advertisers to sink their teeth in to.
And, with the duopoly of Google and Facebook eating up every bit of tech they can find on the net, you'll soon find that that goldmine runs deeper than you ever could've imagined.
Target based on industry, seniority, marital status, groups they've liked and so many more. (I wonder how long before advertisers will be targeting other advertisers based on who they've targeted. Yeah. I think this is getting out of hand.)
Either way, you get the picture. There are no excuses anymore for low-effort targeting.
That said, sometimes those running digital advertising campaigns (PPC or paid social) aren't specifically carrying a digital marketing title. We're marketing people, we wear many hats and, as a result, we can often find ourselves being overwhelmed.
With that in mind it's time to go back to basics and build new, more detailed profiles for your customers.
Here are a few exciting targeting options digital advertising offers to whet your appetite.
2. Failing to Set Clearly Defined Goals
There's something quite empowering about digital advertising.
Being able to target so precisely and then see results literally a few minutes after clicking publish.
But, to quote the great Uncle Ben: "With great power comes great responsibility"
For us digital advertisers, that responsibility comes in the form of creating a set of clearly defined goals for your campaigns.
It's the same principle as traditional advertising: without clearly defined goals you won't be able to measure effectiveness and you'll quickly find yourself chunking through your budget without any results to show for it.
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An easy way to clearly define your goals to make them SMART.
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The good news here is that some channels know as much as we do how important goal setting is so they help you pick some from the outset.
In fact, setting a goal is the very first thing you do when you come to start a new Facebook Ad campaign. Are you after website visits? Or maybe video views? How about some generic lead generation?
Make sure invest as much time in this stage as possible because it'll certainly pay off in the long run.
3. Not Synergising with your Other Advertising
Running cross-channel campaigns with unified creative is the holy grail of advertising.
With the "out of the box" nature of digital advertising, it's perfect for playing a supporting role for any larger marketing campaign you've got coming up.
I mean, think about it logically. Having more opportunities to be seen across multiple different platforms can lead to only one thing: more conversions.
With customers rarely converting the first time they see an ad, this means that customers can choose to interact and engage in the channels that they feel most comfortable, which in turn, could theoretically increase the chances of conversion.
Radio listeners are 52% more likely to include that brand-name in their internet browsing
Typically, we need to see something three times before it truly sinks in. It's the frequency advice we give to advertisers who come to us for our radio offering and the same logic applies to digital.
But synergising your digital advertising with your traditional advertising does more than just amplify opportunities to be seen. It also has tangible benefits that carry well beyond individual campaigns.
As an example, radio listeners are 52% more likely to include that brand-name in their internet browsing. If you're running consistent paid search, you'll be there to benefit from this increased traffic. If not, it'll likely just go straight to a competitor who is!
It pays to be prepared with this one and we think we've come up with a pretty good solution.
4. Not Reviewing your Results
Believe it or not there are some people who don't keep refreshing the page when they run their digital advertising campaigns.
Because the end of your digital advertising campaign isn't actually the end. In fact, it's the beginning of your next one.
Have a look at things like your conversion rate, your cost per conversion and your total cost to begin to get an understanding of how you want to shape your next campaign.
Maybe you realised that you were getting a lot of impressions but not a lot of clicks. This tells me that you need to put extra thought into your ad and the copy in that ad next time you come to run your digital advertising.
A/B testing involves testing two versions of the same ad with a single change to accurately see the benefit from that change.
It also requires a large slice of patience.
Besides allowing enough time to gather a statistically significant sample size, you also need to run the test for at least a week to capture the fluctuation in traffic.
We recommend giving your ads or landing pages at least a month to gather a sample size large enough for you to make informed decisions.
For example, we regularly run A/B tests on our PPC landing pages. We change one thing at a time, like the position or length of the form while still running the original landing page.
We monitor the results for about a month then make a decision based on the data we get out.
Do the same with your digital marketing and you'll find yourself spending less and converting more!
5. Lack of Time or Resources
Our lives and careers are moving at a million miles an hour. The life of the SME is a life of dynamism and evolution. It's likely that if you haven't already put another hat on your head, you will be at some point.
Regardless, some professionals devote their entire careers to delivering excellent digital advertising results and when you think about the sheer amount of individual parts go into building the whole.
If you're still running the same paid search ad you first set up and can't seem to build up your quality score or you only seem to get leads and no conversions from Facebook campaigns then it may be time to think about bringing some of those professionals on board.
In fact, we run our own free digital audits that can be a great indicator as to whether you need to think about outsourcing your digital advertising.
In addition to being completely free, these digital audits are run by our digital experts who have years of experience in digital marketing.
If you're interested, click the link below and we'll let your account manager know:
