One of the most challenging aspects of marketing involves advertising. Maybe it’s because, as a small business, you’re spending money on media that can easily be wasted if you don’t know what you’re doing. The various ad platforms (social, native/publisher, video, programmatic, Google Ad network) can also require a certain specialty or knowledge in order to maximize performance. And just in the last couple of years, it’s gotten harder because all of the capabilities of the different platforms have changed, which means your advertising approach has had to change as well.

It’s not easy to get right. But when ads don’t perform, we often look to some common “go-to” areas to focus on, which can often boost your conversions and overall performance.

No. 1: Adjust Your Landing Pages (Especially for Search & Display Campaigns)

As an agency, we often see our ads as effective in the sense that we get audiences to visit a client’s website. But sometimes, those individuals don’t convert. Some of that might be a mismatch between what the ad promises (and who it’s targeted to) and what the landing page delivers, but in other cases, it’s often that the landing page itself isn’t compelling enough to make individuals buy or convert. What can you do? Here are a few suggestions:

• • Move the call to action to be higher on the page. A lot of landing pages we see from businesses will bury the call to action at the bottom (or put it in the middle of the page). If it’s a form, definitely move it up higher. If it’s an e-commerce “Add to Cart” button, make sure it’s visible on the first screen on both mobile and desktop. Also, make sure to reinforce this same call to action throughout the page.
  • Add a better visual to the page. A nice stock image will often work fine, but if it’s too generic it could be worth investing in original photography (especially of business owners and their products) which can often drive a more trust to convert.
  • Make sure you have testimonials or reviews. This “social proof” helps convince others that people have liked or found success with your products and services and that they should too.
  • Limit the options to escape. A lot of businesses we know send ads to landing pages that already exist on their website. This is not ideal because of the number of options for your audiences to get distracted, clicking around on the header or to other pages. Better to create specialized landing pages for your audiences.
  • Make sure to reassure audiences that your product or services will solve their challenges/needs. To give an example, if I’m selling water treatment to a customer in a local area, what that customer likely cares about is water contamination or getting clean water to drink or use. On the landing page, I’m going to want to make sure to address that.
  • Reinforce why you and why now. What makes your company unique? Why should someone go with your particular solution? On the landing page, it’s critical to help make your case here – something that can convince a prospective customer to convert.

No. 2: Adjust Your Targeting Focus (Oftentimes, Make the Topic More Narrow)

A lot of small businesses we know want to capture a broad swath of audiences, which is fine in theory. The problem, of course, is that your customers are often looking for something very specific. That creates a mismatch between what you ideally want and what the customer is actually looking for. More often than not, it pays to adjust both your ads and your landing page to be more targeted to a specific thing. For example, let’s say you’re a fitness studio placing ads in search that offers Pilates, barre, yoga, or other workouts. Creating a more generic fitness studio ad might work for those who don’t know what they’re looking for. But what about those specifically searching for, say, Pilates? Wouldn’t you want to create an ad (and a corresponding landing page) to be specifically about that topic given that’s what people are searching for? As a customer, you probably would.

Obviously, getting more specific can mean more work. You probably have to create more ad groups and more landing pages, but it can pay off in many cases.[1]

No. 3: Adjust Your Budgeting

Regardless of the ad platform (social, Google, programmatic, native), you’ll have to budget a minimum amount to reach your target audiences. As a small business, if you don’t spend enough money, you won’t get the impressions you need to drive any kind of performance and, even the small amount you might spend could simply get wasted. That’s why it’s important to allocate enough media dollars in the right places. How will you know what’s enough? Much depends on the industry you’re in and the target audience you’re going after (depending on the platform). But all the platforms you’re on will give you a sense of your reach when you first start out. Google Ads, for example, will tell you the impression share lost due to budget or other factors.

One other thing to manage: your budget between different ad groups. As a small business, you’ll want to maximize your ongoing ad performance. Understanding you might want to promote different business lines with different ads, it still makes the most sense to shift the budget to the ads that are performing the best. That way you can maximize your spending on getting conversions. If you think of it another way too, you’re also spending to acquire customers to your list. And in doing so, you can perhaps sell them other items down the road.

No 4: Adjust Your Creative & Messaging

Sometimes poor ad performance comes from the ad itself. In other words, the ad isn’t compelling enough for audiences to click through. How do you know? First, take a look and see whether your ads are meeting the general benchmarks for each ad platform. We’d suggest looking at click-through rates (CTR) in particular you see if performance is up to par.

• • For search ads: 2 to 3 percent is an average CTR
  • For social ads: 1 percent is probably the average CTR, for say, Facebook
  • For display ads: .08 percent CTR (Note: Display ads are often not about getting CTR as much as they are about getting impressions).

If you notice your performance lagging, here are a few things you can try:

• • For search ads, adjust your headlines in particular.
    • Make the copy more action-oriented.
    • Create more urgency around clicking (like a limited-time offer, or telling audiences they should somehow take advantage now)
    • Getting more specifically targeted language to what individuals are looking for
  • For display, consider retargeting ads if you really want to improve CTR. Retargeting often gets better click through rates because you’re targeting people who have visited your website before (or those on a particular remail list). Ads can be much more effective at driving clicks and conversions in this case because people are already familiar with you.
  • For social media, use video. We’ve often mentioned this in these pages, but we’ve helped clients double or triple CTRs on advertising just by using video instead of a static graphic. The reason is pretty simple: Video catches the eye and can get people attention better.
  • For YouTube video ads, key your targeting off Google searches. One of the advantages of using the Google Ad Network, is that a.) You have access to advertise on YouTube and; b.) You can take advantage of search data that Google has for both YouTube and Google. If you’re running video on YouTube anyway, one thing you can try is to target individuals who are searching for particular topics, helping you narrow the pool of people to your exact audiences.

No. 5: Adjust Your Funnel Target

Sometimes, we’ll counsel our clients to adjust their funnel target when they don’t see the performance they’d like. What does that mean? In a lot of cases, advertising is not really built to drive immediate-term conversions, as much as we’d all like it to. So, rather than forcing audiences to convert now, what might be better is to adjust the goals to say, acquisition, where you can continue to nurture individuals once they get on your email list. Instead of “buy now,” the call-to-action might instead be to “Sign up for a free webinar,” “Get on our newsletter list” or “Download our free e-book.” That’s often an easier hurdle than buying immediately from a company they may not know. Then, as mentioned, it’s easy to follow up with an automated email series to encourage them to take the next steps.

Conclusion

As a small business, one thing to consider with advertising, in particular, is outsourcing the work to an agency that knows what they’re doing – one that can help you get the best performance from your ads. While it is an additional cost, it can potentially bring greater rewards for you (especially if you’re currently not doing as well as you potentially could). If you need help, contact us at Marketing Nice Guys about our paid media/advertising services and we’ll be happy to have a free consultation about your needs.

[1] One thing to watch out for in search, however, is that Google Ads (in the last year or so) have recently changed in that it may be useful to test going a bit broader with certain topics to be more effective, given its move to AI and understanding user intent. But how broad will often depend on the industry and the topic you’re focused on.