Breaking Down the Abstract of Digital Advertising

Whether it is for a product, an event, or gaining new members, one of the most efficient ways of attracting traffic and new leads is through digital advertising. And if your goal is to attract young millennials, then social media advertising is probably on your radar. Beyond the obvious - you need an eye-catching ad, with a powerful call-to-action, a hard-working landing page, and a form for lead capture - what actually happens behind-the-scenes for your ad to show? What do impressions mean and what determines the cost-per-click? There are many factors that go on beyond the tangible assets of a digital ad.

Impressions are how many potential times your ad has shown in an ad space or news feed. It is relevant in conjunction with other metrics in that a lot of impressions with little engagement could suggest room for improvement. Each time you place an ad either through Google, programmatically, directly on a social channel, or through some other form of ad placement, it will go to an ad auction. In the ad auction there are ad sizes, feeds, and spaces available across the web or within a given social channel. You set the bid for a click based on an educated guess initially. Your ad goes to the auction and gets bid against other potential ads for that same ad space. This happens in real time, and the winning bid by a difference of pennies can win out. This happens over and over until your ad shows, gets clicked on, and your total budget is reached. To give you a benchmark, if your ad has to show more than a thousand times to get one click, you might want to rethink your next ad copy, imagery or targeting.

You can break down your budget to a max spend per day, with a max spend overall, over a given time frame. On any given day your spend may fluctuate 20% higher or lower than the max daily spend, but you will not be charged more than your overall budget. A good start if you’re not sure of the return on investment is to run a small campaign 2-3 weeks long to gather data and insight to be able to optimize for future campaigns. In that initial campaign you will gain insight into cost-per-click, how much to budget and bid, what is working to get clicks, and how best to optimize to get an action taken on the landing page. Then, tweak and repeat.

Digital advertising is what you utilize to attract unknown, new and potential members and customers outside of the funnel. Spending money on a digital channel with the intent of leading potential leads down the marketing funnel towards qualified leads and conversions is an exciting opportunity to reach and target new audiences. The targeting can vary between ad platforms from title and skills on LinkedIn to specific websites for retargeting ads on AdRoll. LinkedIn will allow you to get started for as little as $10 a day and other platforms can accommodate any budget.

If you are interested in promoting your association with digital advertising and not sure where to start, HighRoad Solution can help. We place ads across the web for associations to help drive leads, event registration, and membership.