Your Ad Campaigns aren’t producing leads? Then Supercharge them!

If you have been running lots of test ad campaigns only to see them fail again and again, we might be able to help. We spoke to Brett Curry the CEO of OMGCommerce one of the fastest growing Google Premier Adwords partners to find out how to supercharge your sales.

Anyone who has been in eCommerce for any amount of time knows that there are a ton of factors that affect whether a product sells on Amazon or anywhere else…

A few obvious ones are:

• Product photos
• Pricing
• Reviews
• Copy
• Sponsored ads
• Marketing

The key to good advertising

We assume that setting up and optimising ad campaigns, killing off high CPA or no CPA campaigns and finding the holy grail of keywords is the way it should be done.

This can be true but it’s pretty basic and the reality is that it’s not the most efficient approach.

The true key is to build a funnel. While a little old the adage of AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire & Action) works well to illustrate.

How big budget ad agencies work

Brands with deep pockets hire ad agencies who have teams of expert ad planners. While most people think advertising is akin to the Mad Men tv series the reality is that it involves careful process planning.

Figuring out:

• Who is best to target
• How you’re going to capture your target them at each stage of the funnel
• What content you could use at each stage

A typical campaign might look like this:

• Attention: Outdoor billboards and TV/radio ads talking about the brand or products benefits
• Interest: A PR campaign with TV interviews and magazine features.
• Desire: Celebrity endorsements.
• Action: In-store promotions and special packaging.

While this seems like a wholly unattainable prospect for your business. The reality is that with some hustle and in the modern age of advertising you can achieve everything in the above list for around £500 including the ad spend.

First let’s have a quick look at a more typical example for businesses starting out in online advertising…

Startup business case study

Consider these two examples for an educational toy start-up to help learn to spell. Let’s say we’re selling our toys at £30 each aimed at teachers and new parents. We’ll also assume a zero cost to produce ad content.

Which of the following plans do you think would work better?

Campaign A – Only target Action

• A single Google Adwords campaign
  • Keywords: best spelling toy, learn to spell games…

Campaign B – Target Attention, Interest, Desire & Action

• YouTube video adverts
  • Keywords: Pre-school learning, Learning to spell, Spelling tutorials…
• YouTube product reviews
• A Google Adwords campaign
  • Keywords: best spelling toy, learn to spell games…
• Retargeting ads on Facebook
  • Criteria: Visited website and viewed at least 3 pages.

A lot of people might think that Campaign A would work. And that if it doesn’t work then it’s probably because we’re not good enough at setting up campaigns/adwords etc…

In reality people do a ton of research even before buying the most mundane products. PWC’s retail survey (https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/retail-consumer/total-retail/total-retail-categories.html) on consumer habits for example shows that only 12% of UK shoppers research in store. That means the rest is word of mouth, online and other channels.

You need to take your prospects on a journey.

Building your own supercharged campaign

Lets stick with the AIDA model. We’ll also assume you’re on a limited budget.

Targeting

To start you should consider only targeting one small geographical area. A smaller audience means less buyers but it also means the buyers you target will be significantly more aware.

Big metropolis cities like London, New York and Paris should ideally be avoided.

Instead look to smaller cities, towns or even bigger villages where you can build an initial following and test your campaigns.

The plan

It’s possible to put together a solid campaign without a glitzy entourage. These days if you have a good product and a decent smartphone you can record TV quality footage on a shoestring budget.

Attention: YouTube pre-roll ads
Interest: Targeted Facebook ads
Desire: Sponsored videos of customer testimonials
Action: Run a geographically targeted ad-campaign

Measure, improve, repeat

Chances are the first run won’t be fully optimal. There will be plenty of mistakes. Keep a track of what worked and what didn’t.

Remember that just because there aren’t direct sales from the advertising medium, it doesn’t mean it’s not working towards your goal.