Setting up an ad campaign for a sales promotion
One of the best ways to draw in new customers is via a sales promotion. You would think that making this happen would be as simple as throwing up a few banner ads online and waiting for everyone to flock to your site. However, there is a whole lot more to it than that. There are some definite steps that need to be followed if you want your online sales promotion to be successful. While some of them may appear obvious, you would be surprised at how many advertisers forget a step or two.
Create an exact start and finish time
The whole idea of a sales promotion is that it is different from the regular prices. It runs for a specific and limited amount of time. This is why it is important that those time limitations be applied onto any ads that are trafficked onto the
ad server, as failing to do so will certain upset customers who click on the ad after the sales promotion has already expired.
Set the correct landing page
It is likely only a few products are on sales during the promotion. Those are the ones that should be displayed on the specific landing page when a customer clicks on an ad. A big mistake is to land them to your homepage. Don’t make them go look for what they came for.
Make sure the promotion is geo-targeted
Businesses that service the world or exclusively online might not need to worry about this. However, it’s important if your business only services a specific region or city. For example, if you only have stores in California, you will have a problem if your ad clicks are coming from areas outside of state. You are basically wasting your advertising money at that point.
Use big and direct ad copy
The goal is to have your ad seen and remembered by as many people as possible, which is why the ad copy should be direct and precise. There is no need to cram the ad with extended details of the promotion except any fine print required by law. The complete details about the promotion can be displayed on the landing page instead.
Set a sufficient frequency cap
Even if the sale or discount being offered is a great one, don’t just assume that everyone will jump at the opportunity when they see the ad for the first time. Some people need to convince themselves to click, and that often means seeing the ad several times. Setting a low frequency cap may mean losing those potential customers.
Test the ad before running it
You have spent time putting the ad together and making sure that it will capture the attention of the viewing public, but have you tested it yet? There are subtle mistakes that can be made when putting a sales promotion ad together. If you don’t spot those errors before the ad goes live, you are going to be wondering why there are no or few visitors arriving at your landing page. This may actually be the most important part of the whole process, so don’t skip ad testing. At the most basic level, test one impression and one click.
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