How Online Advertising Campaigns Become
Successful
Author: Danny Wirken

Introduction

Since the Internet started, its user base has grown
increasingly and boomed to unbelievably large numbers. With the
increased traffic in the Internet, advertisers realized its
potential as an advertising media. As time went on the power of
the Internet as an advertising media became more evident as
newer and improved models for online advertising emerged. Ads
can be found everywhere in the net in the form of banner ads,
pop ups, emails – both solicited and spam, in-text ads, and
inline ads.

With the new ways and means of advertising in the Internet,
businesses are turning to it to launch and supplement
traditional advertising campaigns and even as the sole medium
for their ad campaign. Some businesses, however, still balk at
launching full scale advertising campaigns online. This is
understandable, especially for those who have no previous
experience with online campaigns. It is after all very
expensive to launch ad campaigns and it is better to be careful
when planning to spend such large amounts of cash to ensure that
the campaign will bring about a substantial return of investment
(ROI). There are ways though to ensure that your advertising
campaign will be successful.

Set Goals

In an article by Melissa Honabach on Secrets to Optimizing an
Online Campaign that a business needs to set and communicate
their relevant goals before planning and starting an as
campaign. An important aspect in setting goals is being able to
identify what you want the advertising campaign to actually do
to help your business grow. You have to know what results you
desire from the ad campaign. According to an article on The
Most Effective Way to Advertise here are some questions you can
ask to help you set your goals.

•Is your advertising part of a short-term marketing effort or
one part of your long-term marketing strategy?
•Do you want to generate leads?
•Do you want to use your advertising as a catalyst to building
long-term client relationships?
•Do you want to generate one-time sales?

After identifying the goals you should also set a goal that can
be used to measure the success of the campaign quantitatively.
That goal to be set is the desired ROI. To set the ROI the
average value per customer or average value per customer
segment should be known. This value would be the basis for
calculating the expected and desired ROI. At the end of the
campaign this value and the actual ROI will help determine the
success of the ad campaign.

After setting those goals make sure that you are able
communicate them to the advertising agency you plan to use or
your media partner. This ensures that they know what you want
and that you will be working on the same goals and will have
the same measures for success.

However, just like in traditional advertising it is hard to
measure exactly the ROI for online advertisements. There are
certain metrics that are used, like the number of clicks
generated by an ad or the number of sales since the campaign
started, but even these metrics are insufficient in measuring
the exact profit generated by an ad campaign. However, these
metrics are sufficient in gauging the response or the impact of
the ad campaign and can be used to determine whether the
campaign is successful or not.

Run Tests

Another crucial thing factor that determines an online ad
campaigns' success is the testing phase. Testing should be done
before any ad campaign is fully launched. Set a small portion of
your budget to test the media of choice before deploying all
your resources on the ad campaign. Testing will allow you a
glimpse of how your target audience will respond to the
campaign. Although it might seem like a waste of time and money
to spend resources on testing it could actually save you from a
bigger loss in case the test reveals that the campaign might
not have the impact you desire. For the testing phase of an
online campaign to be comprehensive it is best to test your ads
on multiple websites and to try different ad types as well as ad
sizes, etc. If the test results prove to be unsatisfactory don't
just back out, make the necessary adjustments and test again and
again until you see a positive response from your audience and
you are sure that your campaign is optimized. As Honabach said,
"Ultimately, optimization is an iterative process that reduces
costs over time." Just make sure that your evaluation
procedures are objective and sound or else the results you'll
get from your tests will be useless. The metrics for getting
ROI mentioned above should be used during testing too and not
just at the end of the campaign. Although it might be hard to
evaluate the ad campaigns effectiveness the nature of the
Internet makes it actually easier to evaluate ROI in comparison
to traditional advertising.

For those who plan on using banner ads as part of their online
campaign there are ways to know or test which banner ad will be
more effective. This is discussed in a patent published last
December 29, 2005 entitled Systems and methods of achieving
optimal advertising (US Patent Application 20050289005). The
invention discusses a "process of identifying influential
design elements, selecting and testing banners representative
of such design elements, obtaining feedback, and analyzing it
to extract information from the experiments about which design
elements are most important and which combination of design
elements lead to the best overall banner." The process yields
not only the best banner ad design but also results to a lower
cost of advertising and a higher success rate for advertising
campaigns.

Use Effective Professionals

Do not attempt to save on money by hiring start-up groups with
absolutely no experience to handle your ad campaign. You don't
have to hire the largest firms or oldest ones but just make
sure that the firm you choose has enough experience and has a
reputation for a decent percentage of successful campaigns.

Your online agency can also make or break your ad campaign.
Make sure that the agency you choose has accessible lines of
communication and can deliver results fast. Being able to
deliver fast results entails their capability to analyze and
respond to the data that your online ad campaign produces. The
analyzed data should be such that the results will be relevant
and actionable for those responsible for other aspects of the
campaign. An open communication would also allow you to keep
track of what is going on with your campaign.


About The Author: http://www.theinternetone.net