Your advertising team is struggling to keep up with the competition. What are you doing to stay ahead?

Audience insights is the crux of effective advertising. Are you solving for their needs? How do you know? Is your message / content accessible in a format they can utilise? What is the competition doing differently that’s attracting customers? Test and learn. Fail faster!

Getting new customers for your business Getting new customers is the entire purpose of your marketing campaign; you want people to find you, and you want them to buy your products or use your services. If you’re not getting new customers with your current campaign, it could be time for an overhaul. Take a look at your campaign and think about how you’re targeting your audience. Are you trying to target an audience that is just too large? Dial it back and target your local audience. Is the campaign’s imagery not lining up with the demographic? Try a new design to see if it gets a better response.

The first step in creating effective advertising is knowing your target. To understand their requirements and preferences, use technologies such as analytics and surveys. With this information, you may tailor your content, tone, and style to better meet the needs and challenges of your target audience. Your ads will be more relevant and effective if you customize your approach and show them how your product or service meets their needs and goals. Better outcomes are produced by more effective and engaging marketing initiatives as a result of this strategic alignment.

I would spend time with my advertising team using human centric approaches not only for client personas but also for the company itself. What story feels like a natural continuation and evolution for the company? How can I connect with the consumer through our ad product? Are we missing something? What do they need? Are we paying attention to the consumer needs and wants, their pains and gains? Are we delivering the advertising message genuinely?

In this age of Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI, our market research surveys and interviews can be open-ended rather than closed. Our customers/audience are free to air their thoughts and preferences and we can gain meaningful insights into what our audience want using these LLMs. Questions like "What do you think about our content/product/service?" would then be more effective at capturing the spectrum of the nature and behavior of our audience.

Well developing curiosity is an imp aspect of the headline, but what if you've developed curiosity and the main content is not so much attractive as your headline sounded? A/B testing could also be used to test different headlines and it is also beneficial to know which version is best suited with the main content and attracts more number of audiences.

There are two leading types of headlines that grab readers' attention. The first type, centered around curiosity, plays on the readers' natural inquisitiveness. It entices them to explore further to satisfy their curiosity. On the other hand, the second type of headline, which presents a result upfront, captures attention by highlighting a specific achievement or outcome. This type piques readers' interest, prompting them to seek the methods, strategies, or stories behind the showcased result. Though the choice of headline type often depends on the context, content, and the intended audience to effectively capture attention and encourage further exploration.

My simple rule for ad creative testing. If you give me a 100 ad credits. I'll put 20 credits for testing. If I have 10 variables to test, 2 per each creative. I let it run for a couple of days and measure the results. Then, I put all the 80 credits to the top performing ad creatives. Which means I put 20% of my budget on testing. And then spend the 80% rest on the already tested top performing creatives. With this approach, you can get consistent results with your spending for the rest of your career.

Competition is normal. If you have competition, your industry is thriving. If you have tough ones, you must be a monster in the field. To get ahead, ensure to stay relevant to your target market. Be present in major communication channels and ensure to be strategic in your ad placement. Do not use all channels every single time. Adaptability is also key. Your messaging should be adaptive based on which channel you show your material. But the first step is always to test the waters. Try all communication channels, assess which one is most effective for which message and use it as a bench mark.

Aproveite os benefícios das ferramentas de ADS para fazer combos de textos mais artes, muitas delas já estão fazendo integração com ferramentas de AI. Uma mesma mensagem vai impactar toda sua audiência, mas a interpretação dela vai ser completamente diferente, então ofereça sempre o mais personalizado possível

Optimizing copy is vital for effective advertising. It's not just about presenting the value proposition but also addressing audience objections and motivating action. Clarity, conciseness, and a compelling narrative are key. Tailoring the copy to speak in the audience's language, considering their awareness level, is crucial. Moreover, adapting the copy for various platforms and formats, like websites, social media, videos, and mobile apps, is essential. Tools like Grammarly, Hemingway, and CoSchedule are invaluable for enhancing readability, grammar, and SEO. This multi-faceted approach ensures our copy resonates with the audience and drives the desired outcome, making our advertising campaigns more impactful and effective.

Got Milk, What's In Your Wallet, Think Small, etc. Short snappy unforgettable copy. No need to spell it out. Marketers want too much copy, designers want less. Customers need just enough and they need to see it enough to remember.

Con la frase, "Lo bueno si breve, dos veces bueno" se entiende la importancia de la optimización de un copy. Este debe ser sorpresivo, contundente y sobre todo, BREVE. De esta forma se apela al principio de parsimonia, que refiere a la actitud humana de preferir, ante una situación, la salida o solución más rápida y más fácil. Leer mucho texto en un anuncio e intentar interpretar un copy extenso, diluye el propósito de la información que debe atraer y persuadir. En este punto, sería bueno volver al comienzo y ratificarnos en la frase: "Lo bueno si breve, dos veces bueno"

People have short attention spans and there’s a lot of competition for attention out there, so keep the messaging simple. In additional to a compelling headline, keep any supporting content brief and memorable. Ideally, have only one call to action.

Make sure the copy in your ads communicates well. It ought to outline your value proposition, respond to queries, and motivate action. Write material that is clear, interesting, and suited to the comprehension of your audience. Then, modify it for different online and social media platforms. Improve your grammar, readability, and SEO by using programs like CoSchedule, Hemingway, or Grammarly. Making all-platform optimizations guarantees that your message is more effectively received. Increased engagement, conversions, and campaign success are all correlated with well-written material. Optimize the copy of your ads to increase their effect and boost the expansion of your campaign.

Your first challenge with any advertising is simply getting the attention of your target audience - don't waste the crucial first few seconds of your ads introducing yourself/your brand. Instead, you should be focused on content in those first few seconds that will capture attention and get someone interested in viewing more of the ad (80% of our performance-focused ads are video ads). One easy rule of thumb here is to try not to make your ad look like an ad... focus on content that sells.

Unless your advertising is built upon a big idea, it won't be able to capture your audience's attention. A holistic approach around a big idea can help you create engaging content across multiple marketing channels to promote a single unified message. The more cohesive your campaign is, the better chances for it to gain attention and spark conversations.

I don’t have much time for Canva, or the like, to be honest. The only way out of ‘content graveyard’ is impact. That comes with being different, original, intelligent, which is not something that people can ask a tool to do. We’ve all compromised from time to time, and put style over substance, only to see content sink without a trace. With so much content around, it is easy for yet more content to be irrelevant and invisible. A good concept, the perfect blend of an idea in words and images, would stand out before all the visuals and sounds and different techniques are added to it - it would work even as a squiggle on a piece of scrap paper, or its screen equivalent. Unless the technique ‘is’ the idea. Which sometimes it is.

Humans respond more and better to video and sounds than links and words. Just that should be more than enough to make you invest on it. But in tech ical terms, all retinal and search companies are adding a lot of weight into advertisers and retailers that invest in video ads, giving priority and increasing visibility. They end up with better results, more time spend on page and usually drive better results in the mid-long run for both direct/exposed/key audience or indirect/protection/general audience. But, be aware that is not a clear direct correlation of adding video and doubling the adsales. It takes time. It takes plan and budget. But mainly a mid-long term plan of that influencing your general direct performance campaigns.

In digital media, visual and sounds can stop the scroll and hook people in to the ad, afterwhich your ad copy takes over to deliver the message. Test and optimize this portion as much as you would messaging but only after you've tested the messaging and ad copy.

More important than focusing on in channel results and what FB, Google or TikTok report is keeping track with a post purchase survey. Ask customers how they found you plus questions to get insights to improve your creatives. Why choose surveys? Tracking since all those updates over the past years, no matter what software you use, has been very off. However, customers telling you themselves what touchpoint they remember as the first encounter gives you a very accurate idea of what’s happening and why. If your survey reports $300k in revenue from Facebook and FB says $500k be careful not to overspend. Same when for example TikTok reports $100k but the survey shows $200k. It’s time to push spend here.

Even with rising advertising costs I'm not even a little surprised when I see 30-50% wasted ad spend on Amazon and Walmart these days in a new potential customer's advertising accounts. What's your wasted ad spend? The way we calculate this at Straight Up Growth is simply advertising on search terms that isn't being converted into any revenue. Often times we'll have a potential customer with hundreds of non-branded search that are converting into sales wasting money on "research" from their current agency even when there is statistically significant data suggesting there are far better ways to spend their budget like non branded winners. This metric becomes even more important because profitability is key in 2023 heading into 2024.

To increase your ROI, identify and explore new advertising channels that align with the target audience's habits and preferences. Experiment and conduct A/B testing to evaluate performance.

A informação é o petróleo do futuro! Dados são riqueza, se bem sistematizados e utilizados. Porém, ainda há muitas empresas que não estão nem ao menos se preocupando com isso. As métricas e os indicadores de perfomance de marketing e comercial são essenciais para que qualquer negócio aconteça e cresça. Percebo que existem dois aspectos importantes: um é a sistematização das informações e a outra a análise com foco em tomada de decisão. Profissionais de marketing e vendas tem demonstrado dificuldade em ambos. Essa dificuldade vem especialmente em função de saber, dentro de um universo gigante de dados, quais utilizar. Eu uso sempre o seguinte método: OMTM - one metric that matters ou seja, a métrica que importa.

It's important to have your marketing folks involved when setting goals. When they agree that the expectations are realistic, they'll be enthusiastic to prove themselves. When you set the goals by yourself, and the team feels like they are being set up for failure, they'll look for any excuse for why things didn't work out well, rather then pushing to make sure they do.

Take the entire consumer journey into consideration; ensure you set up ways to get feedback across the stages; test and learn. It's good to look at competition for benchmarking and motivation but stay focused on your consumer.

To stay up to date with trends, customer mindset, things that are proving to be revolutionary in advertising etc. By putting mind into details related to copy optimisation, design refinement or targeting to correct audiences related to topic which we are advertising.

"Your advertising team is struggling to keep up with the competition. What are you doing to stay ahead?" Is it e-bikes? They're pretty good these days

To stay ahead in the competitive advertising landscape, a proactive and innovative approach is essential. Start by conducting a thorough analysis of competitors’ strategies and identifying areas where your team can differentiate and excel. Invest in ongoing training and development to ensure your team is adept with the latest advertising trends and technologies. Foster a culture of creativity and experimentation, encouraging team members to think outside the box and propose novel ideas. Regularly review and optimize your advertising campaigns based on data-driven insights. Engaging in active client feedback loops can also provide valuable perspectives to refine your strategies.

By definition, if they're 'struggling to keep up', then 'staying ahead' is not a problem they will have. Maybe that's why they're struggling.