If used correctly, digital advertising can be a very effective method of customer acquisition, and advertising on platforms such as Google or Facebook is relatively accessible to small businesses.
Here at Shoprocket, we start from the beginning. This means when we do any major marketing activities we follow this process:
Identify our main goal(s): what are we trying to achieve with this action?
For Shoprocket, we advertise online to achieve two things:
- Generate signups (get people up and running with Shoprocket)
- Raise awareness (increase the amount of people who know about us)
How are we going to do this: what are the big factors we have to consider?
For this, we’re evaluating things such as which platform would be most appropriate. This evaluation looks at a variety of factors such as: who are we trying to target, how much is this going to cost, what is our expected RoI (Return on Investment) and what’s the learning curve.
Who are we targeting: what are the characteristics of the people we want to see this advert?
In this step, we look at who is our audience, who are the people that we want to see our message. Targeting the right audience is super important because if you don’t, people won’t engage with your adverts. For example, if you’re selling cheese, you don’t want to target people who are lactose intolerant because it’s unlikely that they will buy the product for themselves. However, if you target a cheese lovers society then hopefully you’ll have a higher chance of getting sales.
Review
Here at Shoprocket, we always run a review on every marketing activity. In these reviews, we look at what went well, what didn’t go well and what learnings are we going to be progressing with? By having this information, we are able to ensure we continuously optimise our campaigns.
One of the problems that a lot of businesses experience is that they try adverts but don’t properly think through their campaign and as such, don’t experience much engagement and ultimately fail. However, if you properly prepare your ads before going live and perform experiments to optimise RoI, they may be very beneficial for you.
To make life easier there are also some awesome tools available for you to use which simplify the process:
- AdEspresso: Helps you to easily create and optimise adverts.
- Optmyzer: Google AdWords Tools for Advertisers, Consultants, and Agencies.
- AdStage: Build, Deploy and Manage Online Ads Across Networks.
Other Resources:
As always good luck with growing your site’s sales!
