Wonder why your display advertising campaign isn’t performing as promised or expected? All too often we see companies losing money on their programmatic campaigns due to simple – and very avoidable – mistakes.
To help you identify where your campaigns may be going wrong, we explain seven of the most common mistakes brands make.
1) Using generic creative
While the rest of your marketing campaigns might be carefully planned and targeted, all too often we see brands making a common mistake in display advertising: running generic creative.
Just like any other media, if you want your display ads to stand out you need to make them appeal to the right audience – ensure that you have a clear, single-minded message, compelling imagery and a strong call to action.
2) Targeting the wrong audience
If you don’t get your targeting right, you could be promoting music festivals to pensioners – and mobility scooters to university students.
And it’s not just serving ads for the right products or services to the right people. Too many brands continue advertising to people who would have bought anyway (or have already bought).
With data and technology available to not only ensure that exactly the right audience see your ads, but also that you don’t show ads to existing buyers (or people who will buy) there’s no excuse for wasting your display advertising budget on the wrong audience.
3) Not upselling or cross selling
Are you making sure that you’re maximising every single purchasing opportunity from your customers? Or are you failing to use your display campaigns to upsell and cross sell.
For example, if you sell someone a holiday, can you offer them insurance or activities? If someone buys, say, a tent from your online store, can you sell them other camping equipment?
4) Not getting your frequency right
If you don’t set a reasonable frequency cap, you won’t be advertising to potential customers – you’ll be stalking them!
While remarketing to potential customers can certainly increase your campaign’s success, nothing is as irritating as seeing the same ad for the same product or service on every web page you visit.
So make sure you plan your campaign carefully from the outset and set the frequency cap for it at the right level.
5) Serving your ads at the wrong times
Data shows that there are key days and times of the week when people are ready to buy – and these times vary between audiences, products or services, and times of the year.
So make sure that you have access to the correct data before you run a campaign, and get the timing of your ads right. (It’s also important to monitor your campaign throughout its duration to make any tweaks necessary.)
6) Not making the most of holidays and peak buying times
There are key times of the year when we know online sales go up – including Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Black Friday. And the companies that make the most of them are the ones that get the real boost.
But maximising your ROI for these peak seasons isn’t as simple as putting your budget behind a poorly thought-through campaign and blasting your audience with ads.
For example, we know with Black Friday that there are key peaks of engagement in the week leading up to the Friday, and the days afterwards.
With the right insights into consumer behaviour during holidays and peak buying times, you can ensure that your ads are running when they’re online and ready to buy.
7) Not capturing consent properly
Post-GDPR, all advertisers need to get explicit consent from users to use their data to serve them ads. If you don’t obtain that data, or aren’t fully compliant in your acquisition and processing of consent, you’ll either be restricted in the ads you can serve, or risk receiving a fine.
So if you haven’t yet implemented a compliant system to obtain data, we recommend you do so immediately (find out how our consenTag can help).
Love to improve the results of your next campaign? Download our free checklist for a successful display campaign. Call the UK office on 020 3262 0415 or email jweeks@crimtan.com to find out how we can help you. If based outside of the UK, click here for the contact details of the Crimtan office in your region.