5 Powerful Ways to Maximize Returns on Paid Media Campaigns
Key takeaways:
- Paid media success starts with your objective and a solid strategy.
- You can boost your paid media returns by putting extra thought into your audience, platforms, and retargeting.
- Marketing mix modeling (MMM) can give you a data-driven approach to boosting your paid media returns.
- Consider your ad formats and content quality when planning your paid media campaigns.
Are your paid media campaigns coming back with the results you crave? If you’re getting lackluster results, then chances are that you have room for improvement when it comes to the structure of your campaigns.
These campaigns seem simple at first glance – you set a bid, you let the auction run its course, and you get impressions at a good price. Still, planning a paid media campaign requires much more work than that.
First, marketing mix modeling (MMM) can help you bring a data-driven approach to your campaigns. With MMM, you can forecast what future performance might look like with added budget, letting you make informed decisions about your ad spend.
Next, it’s important to have a set strategy for structuring your ad campaigns so the process is methodical from start to finish. That means knowing your audience, choosing platforms mindfully, and knowing how to use retargeting. It also means choosing the right ad formats per platform and building quality ad content.
What to Know About Paid Media Campaigns
A paid media campaign is the use of ad inventory purchases to reach your target audience via impressions. An impression happens each time the platform displays your ad to a viewer. Going into a paid media campaign, you should be familiar with:
- Cost per click (CPC): The CPC is what you pay each time somebody clicks on your ad.
- Cost per engagement (CPE): The CPE is the amount you pay when a viewer engages with your ad.
- Cost per thousand (CPM): This is the cost you spend per 1,000 impressions of your ad.
- Bid: A bid is the highest amount you’re willing to pay to show your ad.
- Auction: This is an online bid management system that matches ads with bids and performance.
Paid media campaigns are all about managing CPC, CPE, and CPM in exchange for the most efficient and effective ad performance. Most auction platforms manage bids automatically – you just set your budget for CPM (or engagement or clicks) and let the auction run its course.
Start Your Paid Media Campaign With Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)
Also known as media mix modeling, marketing mix modeling (MMM) is the use of statistical analysis to boost your ROI. This data-driven analysis takes the guesswork out of figuring out why your campaign isn’t performing the way you want.
In short, MMM works by using statistical methods to model the impact of different ad spends on the end outcome of your campaign. The methods it uses can include historical data and regression techniques, and the information you get at the end tells you which channels have the biggest effect on your ROI.
Even companies with good ROI can benefit from MMM because it lets you allocate your budget more effectively. The goal for ROI is always improvement, no matter how good your performance already is. MMM lets you achieve that improvement by identifying the elements that are the most important in campaign success.
5 Ways to Boost Your Paid Media Campaign Returns
Planning an effective paid media campaign starts with having a structure in place for each step of the process. It’s more than just making bids – you have to know your objective and how every moving part of the campaign contributes to reaching your goal. Follow these five steps to give your campaign the best start:
1. Know your audience
Don’t fall victim to the “spray and pray” version of paid advertising. If you’re spraying ads on windows and praying that the right person walks past to see it, then you’re in for an expensive and probably unsuccessful campaign.
Instead of throwing your ads at everyone on the internet, you can save on your budget and get better results by targeting the right audience. That means building out personas that represent your ideal customer.
A persona can be as detailed as you want it to be, and the more detailed, the better. Where does your ideal customer work? Where does she go for answers to her problems? What are her challenges and goals? Who does she report to?
2. Pick the right platforms
Different audiences are easier to reach on their respective platforms. It’s common to focus on Facebook because it seems like everybody is there, but your ad could perform better on YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram if that’s the platform that your audience frequents.
Facebook is great for reaching users of all ages and demographics, but Instagram is perfect for targeting younger audiences (18 to 34 years old). Twitter is ideal for reaching mostly male, tech-oriented audiences, and LinkedIn is good for targeting professionals in senior-level positions.
3. Use retargeting infrastructure
Every social media platform has its own retargeting tools, so know the tools for your chosen network. For instance, Facebook and LinkedIn have tracking pixels, LinkedIn has insight tags, and Google Analytics has tracking tools.
Retargeting is important because it ensures that the right people keep seeing your ads. Facebook uses its “Lookalike Audiences” feature to find users who are likely to be interested in your page, based on their similarities to users who have already shown interest. Tracking pixels essentially let you follow users around with an ad that they’re likely to respond to.
4. Choose the right ad formats
Just because your campaign has one primary goal doesn’t mean you should tie yourself to one type of ad. Use different ad formats to highlight multiple aspects of your product and interest different types of users.
For instance, image and video ads perform well if you have a visually interesting product. Carousel and Experience ads can be great for delivering an immersive ad experience.
5. Build high-quality ad content
Ad quality matters – from the copy to the imagery and design elements, your ads have to be thoughtful, or they won’t perform no matter what your bid strategy is. To get an objective idea of your ad content, use A/B testing to find the best-performing version of each ad you run. You can run two sets of creatives, two sets of headlines, and two sets of description text and finally run an ad that uses the best version of each.
Get an Expert Opinion on Your Paid Media Campaigns
Paid media success depends on having a firm handle on the elements that go into your campaign, plus the intelligence you need to forecast ad results and inform your media planning process. Having a framework in place for your paid media strategy is a good starting point, but you also need to consider whether you have the expertise on your side to make it happen.
Model B has the cross-channel intelligence you need to get transformative results from your paid media campaigns. With the proprietary logic of Blueprint, you can know who to target with each message across multiple media platforms. The unrivaled visibility you gain into your campaign performance ensures that you’re getting the most possible out of your media investment.
Book a meeting to learn more about Model B’s cross-channel intelligence solutions and ask our experts your questions about paid media campaign success.
