A Checklist for Digital Ad Success

Thinking about running ads online?

The best practices for digital ads change just about every week, but a few things remain steady. Each time we run a campaign, we run through a checklist to make sure we’re serving the right ads to the right people at the right time. Doing this makes sure we get the most out of our spend and helps us meet our goals.

Here’s a quick digital marketing checklist of the pre-work required before we start a paid campaign to ensure maximum results.

Pre-Work Checklist for Paid Digital Ad Campaigns

• Know The Audience: Study your audience and target demographics to tailor your ads to their interests and behaviors, location and online habits.
• Set Clear Goals: Don’t just aim for more clicks and impressions. Determine if we are looking for sales, brand awareness or website visits. Make sure the goals of the campaign align with the goals of the greater project.
• Budget Wisely: The amount of money allocated to ads and how it is dispersed is set using monthly and daily budget goals. It’s not just about the cost, but also the return on investment (ROI). We’re always looking at how ad spend stacks up as compared to sales or website traffic. A good rule of thumb is to ensure that there can be at least 10 clicks/day on your ad with the current budget.
• Choose the Right Platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, Youtube, Pinterest… Pick the platforms where your target audience engages most frequently and you predict the highest ROI for your desired action.
• Create Great Content: Ads should be so good, users can’t resist clicking. Eye-catching visuals and videos, catchy headlines and strong calls to action achieve this. We leverage keyword research to know how users are searching and what they are looking for.
• Stay Consistent: Brand creative should be recognizable and aligned with your brand identity.
• Track & Measure: We use analytics tools to track your performance and make data-driven decisions. Our dynamic reports showcase the data that is relevant to the goals of the campaign.
• Plan Ahead: We set a timeline for your campaign and ensure we are not running the same ad for long amounts of time – making updates will prevent the audience from getting “creative fatigue.” We like to change the copy and imagery at least every 3 months.
• Test & Refine: Before you launch your ads, we test all ads, forms and conversion tracking to ensure everything is working as intended.
• Check Legal Compliance: Each time we launch a new campaign, we make sure your ads comply with relevant laws and regulations.
• Listen to Your Customers: Pay attention to feedback and if possible. We observe heat maps of the landing pages to see where and how the customers are engaging with the content. Are they able to find and interact with the content we need them to? Use this information to improve your campaigns and landing pages.
• Be Flexible: The digital landscape is constantly changing. Be prepared to change your strategy as needed. We monitor our campaigns daily to ensure that all is running as expected or so we can make adjustments quickly to lower risk of wasted spend and maximize the budget.

It takes focus, energy and money to stand out when running digital ads. That’s why it’s so important to make sure all aspects of ads are running smoothly and accomplishing your goals. Staying engaged with what’s happening is part of the game. This is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. If you’re doing that, you’re already losing.

Ready to chat about your digital ad strategy? We’d love to help!