Your Online Advertising Isn’t Working – We Know Why… Share: Pace Social Media Date Published 29 October 2018 Categories Analysis, Blog Reading Time 4-Minute Read Why paid advertising is essential to the modern business owner- quick tips to help you get the most value out of your ad spend. Are you advertising your business online? On more than one website/platform? Are you keeping track of the results? Online advertising is often seen as an unavoidable “pay to play” process – spend more, make more. That’s exactly what Facebook and Google want you to believe, especially when you take a closer look at the actual effectiveness of Facebook’s “Boost” button (more on that coming soon) – precisely why almost 90% of all independently owned companies are wary of any form of digital advertising… Ever heard the words “Facebook Pixel” or “Google Analytics”? I think it’s safe to say that “inserting a line of code” to any page will bring up more questions than ever to someone who still remembers the days of floppy disks…The concept of coding is near crippling to most baby-boomer business owners. They pay to play, don’t see an immediate boost in sales, or even worse, misinterpret their stats entirely and chase the wrong audience/demographic. HERE’S HOW THE PROCESS SHOULD GO: A potential customer searches on Google for local businesses that sell motorcycle gear. The search results load and a targeted ad pops up with the top paid results, sporting a picture of someone decked out head-to-toe in a moto bodysuit and matching shiny helmet. Curious, they note the business name and scroll down the search results to do a bit of research. Thanks to the wonders of SEO and expert marketing strategy that same Motorcycle shop’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profile pages are the top organic results as well. They visit their Facebook page, notice a link that goes directly to the motorcycle store’s website, click it and shortly after, purchase the helmet they saw in the paid ad. Throughout the entire process, Google analytics and Facebook’s pixel log valuable data from each visit, increasing the motorcycle shop’s knowledge of their specific customer base. Facebook uses this data to find the perfect audience, making subsequent advertisements easier to place, and therefore cheaper to run. The Motorcycle shop simply needs to keep producing ads that resemble the original one to cement brand loyalty across Google and Facebook. All of this equals one thing: More Sales. Sound fairly straightforward? Well, it’s not. Google and Facebook have made the entire advertising process as complicated and confusing as possible. Yes, in an ideal world, every single ad would drive conversions on its own, consumers would search one of your keywords, click on your awesome ad, marvel at your amazing landing page, and start giving you money right away. In reality, not all ads were made the same; some ads drive conversions, some ads aim to boost awareness of your business and gradually nudge prospects towards an eventual conversion. It’s essential to understand this when pairing paid social and paid search – advertising is most certainly a trial and error process! NOT ONLY DO YOUR ADS HAVE TO LOOK GOOD… So, not only do your ads have to look good, they’ve also got to be reviewed by someone who can interpret the specific data to show which campaigns, ads, headlines, and Call to Actions are getting the job done—and which ones aren’t. You need to know how to divvy up the credit—how to attribute effectiveness—across all the ads on each relevant platform. 89% of marketers agree that this is an important practice, but 66% use insufficient models to actually achieve commercial success! Optimize for better results, learn which Facebook ads are reaching the most users and driving the most clicks. In the end, it’s really all about what makes you the most money! As you can see, advertising online is every bit as involved as actually running a business- so why make more work for yourself? Get in touch with us today and let a professional agency take it from here…