Gone are the days when marketers had to manually set up, bid, order, and report ads. With recent technological advancements, advertisers can now buy and sell ad space automatically, a process known as programmatic advertising. This helps organizations save time and money and exploit real-time data to attract targeted leads.
Programmatic advertising can be an invaluable aspect of your company’s marketing strategy when adequately optimized. Read on for seven tips to effectively plan and execute your programmatic ads to appeal to your customers and achieve your business’s bottom line.
- Define clear goals
The first step to running a successful programmatic ad campaign is setting clear, attainable, and measurable goals. What do you want to achieve with your programmatic advertising campaign?
Do you want to improve your brand’s awareness, influence offline customer behavior, or drive more online sales? By having a clear picture of what you want to achieve, you can efficiently allocate a budget for various inventories. Be sure to use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the success of your campaigns. Here are some KPIs you could use to measure success:
- Conversions
- CTR (click-through rates)
- CPC (cost-per-click), CPM (cost-per-mile), and CPA (cost-per-action)
- Reach and frequency
- Viewability
- App installs
Based on the data from your KPIs, you can set clear goals and develop a strategy to achieve them.
- Segment your target audience
Like other digital marketing strategies, you need to know your target customers to create a successful programmatic ad campaign. However, mapping out your target audience’s general characteristics, such as gender, location, and age, may not provide a complete picture of what your target customers want, so you should consider segmenting in detail.
Segmentation involves dividing your target audience into groups based on their interests, preferences, buyer persona, and search history. You then use this information to create a programmatic ad campaign specific to each segment. When your target customers get ads for items they are actually interested in, they will be more likely to take the desired action.
If you are having trouble segmenting your target audience, contact a programmatic advertising agency such as Revelation Digital to help you define your ideal customers and create engaging campaigns that resonate with them.
- Understand your customer’s journey
Take time to learn the customer journey to understand their desires and needs. The customer’s journey begins at first contact and ends at the purchasing point and is often dependent on the individual client and their shopping experience. By understanding your client’s journey, you will likely create programmatic ads and content tailored to their needs and interests.
For instance, if a customer is in the awareness stage, you will display informative blogs about your products. This, combined with setting up a quality business website and designating helpful customer support, can contribute to a successful conversion path.
- Improve your brand reputation
A bad brand image and reputation results in a loss of trust, negatively impacts sales, and gets in the way of your programmatic ad campaign. One of the most significant causes of bad brand publicity is getting featured in degrading, inaccurate, extremist, or unwanted content.
Improve your brand’s reputation to foster your programmatic ad campaign success by listing industries or websites you do not want your brand to be featured in. You could also have another list of sites that can feature your brand to ensure positive publicity. Be sure to further protect your brand’s reputation by opting for a private marketplace instead of an open exchange. A private marketplace enables your advertisements only to be featured on premium sites.
- Exploit mobile programmatic advertising
Mobile programmatic advertising refers to the process of selling and buying ads automatically via mobile devices in real-time. Most customers today prefer accessing the internet via their smartphones over desktops.
Be sure to aim at targeting your ideal customers in the comfort of their mobile devices. This increases the chances of reaching a broader audience and getting them to take action, which increases your conversion rates.
- Exploit collected data
Be sure to examine the data collected from your programmatic ads campaign. You can then use this insightful information to optimize your marketing campaign to reach your target audience and increase click-through rates effectively.
Data can also help you determine how well you target your audience, the advertising campaign’s reach, expected conversions, and potential return on investment.
- Use rich and attractive media
The better you can connect with your target audience, the higher the chances of standing out in the highly competitive digital sphere. Incorporate graphics, audio, video, and images into your programmatic campaign to grab your audience’s attention and encourage them to engage with your ads.
Endnote
Programmatic advertising is a cost-efficient medium to boost brand awareness and drive sales. Define clear goals, segment your target audience, understand the customer journey, improve brand reputation, and go mobile to take your programmatic advertising to the next level.