In online advertising, no one can fully guarantee that your ad campaign will be a hit. Yes, you can (and should) run tests have creative brainstorming sessions to tweak and develop the ad campaign much as you want, but the fact is, you won’t really know if it’s a hit or miss until it is actually out there.
Fortunately, though, there are few things that you can do to improve its chances of success. As mentioned above, you should test the components of your campaign to see which aspects are working and which ones aren’t.
Split test designs or copy to determine the best ones. If you discover that’s something’s amiss, go back to the drawing board and brainstorm changes and revamps. On top of this, it’s important to note that the success of an ad campaign doesn’t just depend on the ads and how they are deployed. External factors (acts of God, political and social shifts) also come into play and they certainly have to power to make or break your campaign. And while you don’t always have control of these factors, it’s best to always keep them in check before running your ads.
To help you assess the internal and external components that can affect your ad campaign, we’ve put together a few questions that can help determine if it’s the right time to unveil your campaign. Check them out below, apply the ones that are right for your situation and be sure to ask these questions before hitting the “Launch” button.
Is your product bug free?
Even the most brilliant of ads won’t do you any good if the product is faulty. Take Apple, for example. The tech giant recently unveiled an awesome new ad featuring the Williams sisters. The ad, which demonstrated the iPhone’s “Do Not Disturb” feature was funny, witty, and effective. Too bad the timing of its release was terrible. As AdWeek pointed out, while the spot was indeed brilliant, it was “released for New Year’s—when, due to a glitch involving the rollover to 2013, “Do Not Disturb” suddenly stopped working for a number of users on Tuesday morning.”
Of course, trying to foresee problems in your products is a difficult task. (Evidently even the great Apple can slip in this department.) But do make it a point to give your product a thorough check especially when you’re planning to release a big ad campaign about it.
What’s going on in the news?
Always, always check the news and trending topics lists before launch. A poorly timed ad can give you a PR disaster faster than you can say “retraction” so do your homework before unveiling an ad campaign. For instance, if you released an ad for guns or bullets around the time when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting took place, you’d certainly receive a lot of flak from the public.
To prevent your ad campaigns from backfiring, be sure to always keep tabs on what’s happening in your industry and in the public sphere in general. It’s one thing to ride on a trending topic, but being timely in the worst possible way is a different story.
If your website up for it?
Don’t forget to check the pages and features of your website / landing page before publishing an ad campaign. Ensure that your target audience will be able to perform your desired call to action by testing all the buttons and links on your site. Also ask yourself if your website will be able to handle the traffic that your ads may bring. The last thing you want is a site outage in the middle of your campaign.
Image credit: Colin_K on Flickr
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