The planning phase is one of the single most important steps you can take when you choose to start advertising your products or services. Without this, you’ll simply be wasting your money.
So, with that in mind, here are 5 of the biggest dos and don’ts to watch for during the planning phase:
DO Consider Consumer Habits
I’m not going to tell you to target your most profitable customers. You know that already. What I will tell you is to consider the mindset your target audience is in throughout their day, as they go through their routines. For instance, a single parent likely isn’t thinking about dating while they’re rushing around at work, but they may very well be considering it when they’re sitting by themselves at night. From this, you can put together a list of sites, habits, and formats that will work best for you.
DO Customize Landing Pages For Each Source
People landing on your site from Adwords will have a different mindset than those coming from a Facebook campaign, and different again from your latest YouTube video. So, you’ll need to create a landing page that meets the needs of these visitors and completes your custom sales funnel. This doesn’t mean you need a different landing page for every keyword and campaign, but you should customize things in a way that makes sense for the target.
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DON’T Be Afraid To Get Creative
One of the most common mistakes people make when creating their advertising is that they’re boring! They don’t make people take notice, they don’t set the products and services apart from all the others, and they don’t make people interested enough to click through. Ideally, you want to presell your product or service enough that they already want to buy before getting to the landing page. Have fun with it! Humor can be a great source of sales and relationships.
DON’T Overload Your Target Audience
If you’ve done your research and target audience profiling, there will always be some overlap, but try not to overdo it. If you can, vary your ads enough that each one appears fresh and new. The same can be said for the length of time an ad is hosted on a site. If you can, regularly change up the ads to battle banner blindness and keep people interested.
DO Test and Try Out Different Things
Even the smallest changes in text or graphics in your ads and landing pages can have a huge impact on the results. Try all sorts of things, but remember three things: Only test one or two things at a time, keep track of it all, and try to be as unbiased as possible. This will not only improve the bottom line for your advertising campaign, but it will also give you tons of information you can use in the future for everything from web copy to social networking interactions.
Do you have any dos and don’ts that you’ve learned while setting up advertising that’s helped boost your results?