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E-Media Strategist : The Secret to Successful Online Advertising

Tips for Online Advertising Success - Return On Investment Strategy for Publishers

September 2009 By Eric Shanfelt
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Insights at a Glance

If your advertiser is unhappy with the performance of his campaign, make sure he’s evaluating the entire campaign—ad creative, landing page and follow-up pages:

• Can I understand the ad in just a glance? Or do I need to sift through a ton of copy or wait for a 30-second animation to finish?

• If the goal is anything other than branding, is there a clear incentive and urgency in the creative that makes me want to click? Do you tell me what I should do and why now?

• If the goal is lead generation, does the landing page reinforce the incentive? Is the form clear and easy for me to submit? Is there anything to distract me from completing the form?

• If the goal is sales, is the checkout process easy and are you tracking the entire process? Align your campaign goal, creative and how you measure the success of the campaign, and you’ll be much happier with the outcome of your campaigns and the ROI you achieve.


NOTE: This month's column isn't written to you, dear publisher. It's written to your advertisers. Please pass it along with my regards. It will help them be more successful with their online ads and get better return on investment (ROI) with limited budgets. In the end, it will help you, too: A happy advertiser is a repeat advertiser.

 

"I'm cancelling my campaign because I'm not getting any clicks." Over my years in online media, I've lost count of how many conversations I've had like this. An advertiser didn't get enough clicks, leads, downloads, sales or other tangible response, and thus pulled the campaign and left, disappointed with the media property. But I also recount many instances when, before they pulled the campaign, the advertisers (or agencies) were willing to talk first. I shared with them the one secret to successful online advertising, and those that listened saw immediate, dramatic improvements in campaign performance. Are you ready for it? Here you go:

Match your creative and success criteria to your campaign objective.

"Uh, that's not really a secret," I hear you saying. You'd think this would be Marketing 101, but I cannot tell you how often I have seen the objective, creative and how the advertiser measures the success of a campaign completely misaligned. And when they are, often the campaign is nowhere near as successful as it could be, and the advertiser is disappointed with the results. When looking at a campaign, ask yourself these four questions:

1. What is the goal of my campaign?

2. Do my creative and landing page align with that goal?

3. Do my creative and landing page make sense to my audience and not just to me?

4. How will I measure the success of the campaign, and does it align with the goal?

What are you trying to achieve? Is it branding? Visits to your Web site? Registrations? A sales inquiry? An immediate online purchase? Whatever your goal is, make sure that your creative, landing page and how you will measure the success of the campaign all align with the goal and make sense from the perspective of your audience (which is often different than yours). By the way, don't try to achieve multiple goals with one campaign. It will be like a sofa bed—it doesn't do either the "sofa" or the "bed" well.

 

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“Blanchard is demanding. He won’t allow you to flip through this book, nod your head, and leave. If you’re in, you’re going to have to invest to get your rewards.”
--Chris Brogan, president of Human Business Works

“Social media isn’t inexpensive; it’s different expensive. The human effort required to do


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