Creating online ads can be a fun and creative process if you approach them with a clear understanding of your marketing goals and target audience.
Start by understanding your target audience’s needs and language. Some call it the audience`s “pain point”.
For instance: I had a customer who was an acupuncturist who specialized in handling older people with arthritis.
His ads (print, video, and static images social media ads) read like “What would you do if it didn’t hurt?” The advert would show an older couple dancing or in another ad, there was an older man sitting at a table watching another couple dancing, then the ad further explained how the program worked and invited viewers to request a free consultation.
Ensure to focus on placing ads in the best place for your customer. A jewelry store that sells engagement rings probably does not want to place ads in a magazine or on a site that has an audience of older, married people.
If you can clarify what you are running an ad for, it will go a long way to ensure the success of your ad campaign.
In this article, I will walk you through how to make online ads that will draw qualified leads into your sales funnel, read on.
What Are Online Ads?
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, digital advertising, Internet advertising, or web advertising, is advertising that leverages the Internet to promote products to audiences and platform users.
Online advertising includes search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, email marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner ads), and mobile advertising.
Like other advertising media, online advertising often involves a publisher, who integrates ads into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the ads to be displayed on the publisher’s content.
Other potential participants include ad agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server that technologically delivers the ad and tracks results and advertising affiliates who do separate promotional work for the advertiser.
Steps to Create Online Ads
#1. Know Your Product, Target Audience, and Marketing Objective
You know your product better than anyone else, right? Now it’s time to communicate your dream to others by stepping back and giving 100 percent of your attention to the product, your target audience, and your objective with your digital marketing strategy.
Know your product: Why should any buyer purchase from your store, when there are other competitive products in the marketplace?
You must be able to articulate this quickly via your online ads or the reader will move on to other comparable products.
There are numerous brainstorming techniques that will get the creative juices flowing as you build online ads.
One such technique is the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis and it is a good way to identify which features of your product to highlight in your ads.
Out of these discussions, you and your employee will learn how to better convince your target audience to buy your product.
Know your audience: In the digital world, different ad platforms are popular with different audiences so you need to identify your ideal audience and where it spends its time on the internet before you design your digital ads.
For instance, if you run a daycare center, your audience will be young families, not senior citizens and those two groups lean toward different parts of the digital world.
The demographic analytics on your site can help you pinpoint who is attracted to what you are selling and perhaps more importantly, who isn’t.
Know your goal: Do you want likes, leads, followers, purchases, the first page on Google, or something else?
You need to clearly identify your marketing goal with each digital ad campaign. That will determine the text and imagery you want to use to improve your brand awareness and then ultimately lead users to make their purchases.
A successful campaign will lead your prospect every step of the way so they don’t divert to a competitor or lose interest going through the stages of the sales funnel.
So, once you do all this groundwork, what is most important in creating your online ad?
#2. Conduct Marketing Research
Market research is a critical part of campaign promotion. Digging into your buyer personas, market research can answer key questions about your ideal market, such as:
#1. How old are they?
#2. What do they spend much of their time doing?
#3. What social media channels do they use, if any?
#4. Do they live in urban, suburban, or rural areas?
Having information about your target audience can help you answer questions on — Twitter or YouTube. Instagram or TikTok?— because you will understand more about how to appeal to the ideal people.
#3. The Design of Your Online Ad is Critical
It is tempting to put an ad together quickly with little or no thought devoted to the headlines, colors, text, or other minute but important details.
However, without attention to this detail or some research, your dream will struggle through the pipe to become a reality.
Eye-catching is the goal: The average American consumer sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day, According to Forbes.
Some people might say that a good ad is one that makes you laugh. Others might say that it is one that makes you think.
There are as many opinions on what an ad is as there are people in the world. Some ads are serious, some are funny, and some are a mixture of both. So you see, what makes an ad good is subjective.
Some users might like an ad that is very flashy and uses so many colors. Others might prefer an ad that is simple and uses lesser colors.
Some users might like an ad with a lot of movement, while others might find it distracting. Again, what makes an ad good is subjective.
There is no single answer to the question of what makes a good ad and advertisement design. Different people have different opinions and tastes on the matter. What matters most is what the person viewing or reading the ad thinks about it.
However, there are some general things that make an ad successful.
#1. Your objective is clear: Whatever you create must be eye-catching to stop the viewer as they scroll through all the clutter.
If you are not a design specialist and you are worried that hiring an expensive designer to create these designs for you will break the bank, you can leverage a free graphic design site like PosterMyWall.
#2. Add text wisely: Make every word count in your ad copy; focus on the customer by using words like“you” and “yours.”
Brainstorm words that provoke an emotional reaction in relation to what you are selling: fun, comforting, exciting, relaxing, etc. Keep your headline length at 5 words max, with ad text increasing to 19 words.
#3. Choose the right size: Once you decide on the platform for your digital ad, do your research and follow the guidelines for size.
You can create one fascinating design that encapsulates the essence of your campaign and utilize it across platforms.
For this, you don’t need to redevelop the design in different sizes again and again – simply leverage the free resize feature in the PosterMyWall editor to develop multiple copies in different sizes in one go.
#4. Choose Your Platform
Choose the most effective platform to deliver your marketing message to your target audience. You should also do some additional research on the costs, ROI, and benefits of certain ad platforms and methods.
You may come to the realization that leveraging multiple ad platforms and methods would be the right move for your campaign – such as search engine and social media ads.
This is actually a powerful strategy, as it casts a broader net and opens up the possibility of reaching even more prospects where they already are.
#5. Decide on a Budget
When you choose to go with paid ads, you need to spend money to make money.
Getting your ad budget approved can be difficult, so make it easier to get what you need by clearly defining:
#1. The total budget you need to run the ad
#2. How the costs are broken-down
#3. A projected ROI
#6. Craft a Message
At this point, you know your target audience and your preferred media platform, but you are still not sure what you are saying. Here is where you will want to think about the broad purpose of your campaign to inspire your ad.
Do you want users to come to your store, or visit your website? Is your immediate marketing goal to drive free signups for your software, or ebook downloads? Think about the message and how that can feed into the end goal(s) of your advertising campaign.
#7. Include a CTA
While building brand awareness, it is critical for ads to be effective, it’s not enough in isolation.
That’s why all your ads also need call-to-action (CTA) buttons that provide information for consumers on what to do next.
In some cases, such as an ad on your website — the CTA may be simple and direct, such as “click here to buy now.” or “sign up for our newsletter”
#8. Maintain an Active Online Presence
You have spent a lot of time, money, and energy on your digital campaign. It’s important to have a concentrated, consistent plan for the platforms you have identified to reach your ideal audience.
For instance, post often and vary posting times by day of the week and time of day to saturate specific platforms as well as different time zones with your marketing message.
Consumers need to see your ads a number of times before they take notice and action, so push your ad on a number of platforms on a rotating schedule (website, social media, blog, banners) to achieve this saturation.
Keeping up with such a schedule appears like a hassle for a business owner already pressed for time but there is a solution – simply schedule all your social media content for later with PosterMyWall’s Premium plan and forget about it!
If you are running paid ads, for instance on Facebook or Google, use that demographic knowledge you obtained from your analytics to tailor your ad audience according to your needs to maximize your brand’s reach.
Conclusion
Online ads have become an integral part of marketing strategy and can no longer be skimped on if you want to stay competitive and have a finger on a good conversion rate.
Creating an insightful, progressive marketing strategy that incorporates online marketing is key to your success as a business owner in cut-throat competition.
But as you can see, it does not have to be something frightening – with the simple tips and tools in mind suggested in this article, you can easily master the art of making online ads without causing a huge dent in your budget. So don’t put the fire any longer, start designing your ads today and see you heading for the sky in your marketing journey.
