In my interactions with advertising agencies and direct advertisers, I’ve repeatedly seen them make basic mistakes in digital advertising which can easily derail their advertising strategies.
So without further delay, here are the 7 deadly sins of online advertising
- Not using display advertising or trying to focus on building a brand.
Many marketers focus on results, but advertising without any focus on building an identity is not a good idea. Advertising for results mean you get customers to signup, sometimes mindlessly without paying attention to whether the customer will retain or not or whether the value proposition was communicated effectively.
This is especially true with marketers who have an advertising strategy that only consists of google Adwords or other text only channels. A channel like Google Adwords cannot effectively communicate the intent of the brand.
Your product / brand needs to be exposed to the target audience using a visual medium as such a medium has been seen to influence the decision at the time of purchase. Display advertising precisely does that effectively and it also helps largely to build a brand identity.
2. Not having a mobile advertising strategy
In my conversation with marketers, this is one big thing that surprises me the most — marketers are still clueless about a mobile strategy in a mobile first world. Mobile advertising cannot be an afterthought anymore, no matter how hard it is to deal with the fragmentation of devices. Not having a mobile strategy means missing out on engaging the user in the most important screen in 2015.
3. Not having a cross device advertising strategy
Consumers today rapidly shift between multiple screens and if marketers want to have a continued engagement and better results, they would need to follow the consumers across devices. This approach drives better results and increases ROI.
Not to be confused with simple cross channel advertising which is also important but that method continues to treat users in silos across multiple channels.
4. Not using a data driven approach for advertising.
Marketers often think that the only they need is an ad server. While this hypotheses is true for very simple campaigns, they do not provide enough data. For example, can you measure the overall advertising engagement funnel. Can you find out the drop off points in the funnel of your campaign?
It is important to use some data tool that helps marketers understand the entire marketing funnel and not just the traditional KPIs.
5. Not using programmatic, AI (artificial intelligence) driven buying
A surprising number of marketers continue to buy direct from publishers or through ad networks. These approaches while can give the right target audience don’t necessarily provide the best ROI.
Programmatic buying is an automated way of buying media over a real-time auction (real-time bidding or RTB) allowing marketers to buy the right audiences from a suite of publishers instead of just one and buy it at a variety of prices (low or high), depending on the supply demand situation.
Not using programmatic in this day and age is definitely not a good idea.
6. Not using Real-time marketing techniques and Personalization
Real-time marketing and personalization can be used to deliver high quality advertising experience. For example, social media triggers or user behavior could be used to deliver dynamic ads. Real-time event trends on social media could be used to deliver relevant ads. User purchase histories can be used to serve up related & ads to educate the user about the product.
These tools are inexpensive and easy to get started and not using them is definitely a “spray and pray” strategy.
7. Not using Audience targeting
Audience targeting is a very important strategy that is often ignored by performance marketers. Audience targeting has clear measurable results and there is no reason why marketers not use it as a part of marketing campaigns.
Other important items to consider:
First party audience collection and targeting
Advertisers can harness their own customer data to deliver personalized, retargeted ads. While it is not a must have, first party audiences can be collected and used across channels, devices or campaigns.
Not using retargeting
A surprisingly large number of advertisers have never used retargeting and don’t think it is necessary when running a display campaign. Retargeting is an important part of a marketing campaign, especially when the product / service has active users and has shown to improve lift and overall results.
So there you go marketers. These are some unforgivable sins (actually just mistakes) in online advertising. I hope that this list helps you in getting your advertising strategy right.
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Want help in solving some of these problems? We can help
Reduce Data is a cross device advertising platform that helps marketers reach users effectively across multiple devices. Get in touch with us if you have questions related to any of these common online advertising mistakes or if you’re actively advertising through other digital mediums. We can deliver better ROI thanks to our algorithmically optimized, cross device platform.
