There is an art and science to running a paid advertising campaign. With all online advertising platforms increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence and machine learning, gone are the days of manual adjustments and management. 

As a digital marketing agency, we have adapted to the changes happening in the industry but the fundamentals of creating content that will resonate with our clients’ target audience remains the same. 

Here are some best practices which we follow to run high performing, top converting paid media campaigns for all our clients:

Creating Impactful Paid Landing Pages

Each landing page that we create for a client is unique. Our purpose with each client’s landing page is to use distinct elements that showcase the individuality of the brand and highlight its best features. Along with using unique elements for each landing page, there are common features which consistently work well in attracting and engaging the right target audience. Here are some landing page elements which help us create unique and impactful landing pages for our clients:

1. Clear and Concise Argument Construction: The argument construction for each landing page depends on the client’s situation and target audience. A one size fits all approach does not work. Each landing page, based on the client’s situation will develop a different argument to make a case for the client. Highlighting the uniqueness about the client will set them apart from their competition and show their target audience that they’re the right fit for each other. 
2. Strong Calls to Actions: Providing a clear intent as to what you want the prospect or buyer to do is an extremely important feature of each landing page. Many of the pages we create are lead generation landing pages, so we include a clear “Request Info” button to make it easy for the prospect or buyer to fill out the client-specific request information form. Each landing page provides call to action buttons at the top which persistently follow as you scroll down the page so they are never out of sight for the user. 
3. Simple Forms: The form used on the landing page depends on where your target audience is in the marketing funnel. But, a rule of thumb is to use simple forms with as few fields as possible so that the prospect doesn’t hesitate to provide that information. On lead generation landing pages, a simple form asking for basic information like name and email helps get the essential information to begin communication with the prospect. Testing out where the placement of the form will work best is a good idea as each situation will be different.
4. Proofs & Success Stories: Showing success stories of how customers have benefited from a client’s product, service or offerings helps to convince others. This could include showing customer reviews or including their story on how they benefited from the product. This will allow potential customers to visualize the benefits that they can glean from the same product. This becomes a really important aspect of our landing pages to show a product’s real benefits to potential customers.
5. Landing Page A/B Testing: Testing headlines, copy, messaging, images, calls to action, form fields and placements can all help your landing page continuously reach your audience and allow you to learn from their behavior how best to communicate with them.

Creating High-Converting Digital Ad Creative

Keeping the client’s brand in mind, the target audience and the goal of the campaign helps us come up with a one-of-a-kind strategy for each client. There are several factors that we take into consideration as we develop ad creative for each client campaign.

1. Use authentic photography: As all paid marketing platforms have become more and more visual, using the right image is exceedingly important to creating the right ad. The use of high-quality images from the actual client helps us develop a more authentic look and feel. 
2. Stand out from the competition with eye-catching design: With the increase in advertisers online, it becomes imperative to stand out from others. One thing that can help you distinguish yourself from the competition is to select images, copy and design elements which will make your ads memorable and your brand stand out from the crowd.
3. Write clear and concise copy: Today’s target audiences have limited bandwidth and attention spans. It’s best to quickly get your audience’s attention and provide your offer than to write long ads which will not show after a limited number of characters.
4. Highlight your uniqueness: What is one thing that is unique about you? Use your ad creative to bring attention to that factor. It will set you apart even further from your competition. 
5. Add calls to actions: Depending on what type of campaign you’re running and where your prospect is in the funnel, calls to action will differ.
6. Run consistent messaging on all platforms: If you are using multiple platforms for your campaigns, you would want to keep using consistent messaging across all platforms. This way your consistent message will reach customers no matter which platform they use. 
7. A/B test ad creatives: A/B testing different sets of ads, whether it is videos, images, copy and other creative elements in ads will help you understand which message resonates with your audiences better. As a result, you can tighten your messaging and talk directly to your prospective customers.

Paid Campaign Management & Optimization

Search, Social and Media Advertising paid platforms are all powered by algorithms that maximize their own profits with little regard for a marketer’s investments. To offset the algorithm’s greedy tendency, Elliance uses sensible campaign management techniques to tune, optimize and micro-manage various aspects of the campaigns.

1. Budget optimization: Managing a budget to get the most results out of your investment is an important part of running a successful paid campaign. Our day-to-day optimization tactics allow us to get the most out of the budget that we have to maximize performance for the client.
2. Bid management: With AI playing a big part in paid campaigns, providing the right bidding signals to the algorithm becomes crucial to run a successful campaign. Bidding signals include bid adjustments by devices, locations, time of day, day of the week, ad type, audiences and many more. Without judicious bid management, the algorithm will always steer towards maximizing profits for the platform at the expense of our clients.
3. Keyword management: Continuously updating your keyword list to filter out non-relevant searches through negative keywords will keep the campaign on target and your ads showing in front of the right searchers. This eliminates waste of our client’s precious marketing investments.
4. Audience optimization: Regularly monitoring your audience profiles and demographics to make sure you’re getting conversions from the right audience can help to keep the campaign showing to your right fit audience. Again, when it comes to maximizing return on investment for our clients, we leave no stone unturned. God is indeed in the details.
5. Managing Algorithmic Recommendations: The advertising platforms routinely recommend  changes to the client campaigns. Instead of blindly accepting these recommendations (most of which lean towards maximization of their own profitability), we filter them through the lens of each client’s strategic objectives, accepting the ones that align and discarding the ones that don’t.

Elliance, an SEM and paid advertising agency, brings prosperity to clients through digital campaign management services to grow your brand’s share of mind, voice and market. View our work with various clients and consider partnering with us.