Our amazing team of Growth Marketers here at Shoelace is always prepared to face the challenges of the year ahead. Today they share some ad optimization tips, armed with their own client experiences, providing insight into the areas of testing, data, and creativity. Let’s take a look at what they had to say!
How do you ensure that your ads are targeting the right audience, and what tools or strategies do you use to identify and refine your audience?
Identifying your audience is one of the most important steps in marketing. Really knowing how your market behaves, reacts, and thinks can help you to deliver your ads to the right people at exactly the right time, and testing is a huge part of that.
“Testing new audiences is one of my favourite parts of the job. Instead of just ticking off the box of the exact product I'm advertising, I'll try to really envision my ideal audience and what other boxes they might fit into.”
- Angy, Growth Marketer
“The holistic view of how the business is doing with tools such as Shopify and Google analytics instead of supervising only what the platforms report is key to knowing if the strategy is really working and the right audiences are being reached.”
- Tania, Growth Marketer
“As a marketer, understanding target audiences is vital and essential for achieving your marketing ROI. To ensure your ads are targeting the right audience, it’s important to go beyond their demographic information and personas and understand what are their roles and challenges in the path to purchase. You should also analyze your competitors’ audiences and define who your target audience is NOT. Persona development should be an ongoing process, as you gather more data and interact with customers, you will get an increasingly accurate understanding of your target audiences, allowing for more effective optimizations."
- Waed, Growth Marketing Manager
What role does data and analytics play in optimizing ad campaigns, and what metrics should ecommerce brands be tracking?
Historical data has always played a critical role in the success of any marketing campaign. Even being able to read the current data and use it to optimize your running campaigns is a vital part of growing your overall strategy.
“Data based decisions can’t go wrong most of the time unless there is a major external unexpected trend or event. Metrics such as CTR, CPA, ROAS, MER as well as Bounce Rate, CR and New VS Returning customers rate can help most e-commerce brands identify their wins and weaknesses, because they reflect users behaviour at different touch points (ads, landing page, 2nd visited page, checkout..).”
- Ibtissam, Growth Marketer
“Growth marketing is ruled by data and analytics. Setting and monitoring KPIs is the only way to sustainably grow your brand. As a DTC marketing partner, we are consistently analyzing key performance metrics and developing data-driven strategies to continue improving them.
Ecommerce brands should be tracking AOV, CVR, CAC, ROAS, MER, LTV and returning customer rate. Each of these metrics works together to tell a story. They break down into higher funnel data like impressions, CTR, link clicks, and adds to cart. So if any of these metrics fall below industry standards, we will see that strain on deeper funnel metrics and will need to dig deeper to implement a strategy to course correct.”
- Jessica, Growth Marketer
“As marketers, we do have a gut feeling of what we think will / won't work for our clients. But I have been surprised many times while testing - the data may not always align with your feelings! I feel more confident making decisions based on performance data. Most of us focus on e-commerce based metrics like return on ad spend, cost per acquisition, conversion rates and those are probably the most important metrics since the end goal is almost always revenue and profits. But we should also be looking at engagement metrics like click- through rates and click to purchase ratios for statics and hook rate and hold rates for videos. It helps us understand what kind of creatives resonate stronger with the audience and build more of those in the future."
- Sahitya, Growth Marketing Manager
How do you create effective ad copy and visuals, how do you align with broader marketing goals and messaging?
When visuals and copy align to create the perfect ad, magic happens. Creating that magic is definitely easier said than done, but with the right direction (and Growth Marketer) it can be achieved.
“Pain points, pain points, pain points!! The easiest way to create effective ad copy and visuals is to identify your customer’s pain points and use that pain point to quickly relate to them through your creatives. A huge part of why people buy is because the product or service solves some problem for them. Asking a question in your copy that pushes your value proposition is a fantastic method. Ideally, your creativity will be compelling enough to encourage them to click through and then BOOM, you’ve just landed yourself another visitor in the funnel!”
- Tianna, Growth Marketer
“To create effective email copy the best practices include to personalize your emails where you can, be conversational and use your brand tone of voice. find a nice balance between promotion and education, and be sure to not bombard your audience with too many emails. Valued content is what readers want to receive, the more you target your audience's preferences the more receptive your subscribers will be! Establishing trust is important and will also allow you to maintain high engagement.”
- Naomie, Email Marketing Strategist
"Knowing where the user you're targeting is in the customer journey is essential to create effective ad copy and visuals. As a team we're used to sharing what is working in our accounts, so that we can all benefit from trends that are happening. This has helped identify different ad attributes like best performing ad formats or the best copy approaches.”
- Tania, Growth Marketer
Want more ad optimization tips? Our team of experienced Growth Marketers is here to help! At Shoelace, we prioritize collaborating closely with our clients to establish and accomplish their unique business objectives. Our approach involves evaluating performance patterns, pinpointing areas for enhancement, and strategizing for the future. We strongly believe that these efforts will enable our clients to thrive in the upcoming year and beyond.
Contact us now to explore how we can assist you in achieving your 2023 goals. Let's take your marketing to the next level!