Is Your Advertising Hurting Your Brand?
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You advertise your brand in hopes of attracting new customers and growing revenue, but is it doing more harm than good?
Marketers and business owners mistakenly believe that any advertising is a good thing. This is not the case. Some misguided approaches will send customers running for the hills, rather than to your door. Even worse, these businesses have no idea they wasting money while damaging their brand. Here are a few scenarios where advertising might turn customers against you.
Your ads are too intrusive
Consumers don’t like it when they are browsing the web and a video pops up out of nowhere to sell them something. Media channels call this “interruptive” advertising, but most people would just call it “annoying.”
Pop-ups used to have some impact, but those days are dwindling fast. Pop-ups are unwelcome in the eyes of most consumers, same with ads that break up articles in the middle of the text (intertextual or interstitial ads). These tactics don’t just turn people away from your brand. They hurt online advertising in general. Invasive ads are the biggest reason why some users are installing ad blocking software.
If you asked them, most people would likely tell you they’d rather see no ads at all. So what is a growing business to do? You’ve got to reach customers online somehow, right?
The key is relevance. Google is one of the biggest advertising platforms on earth because it has a well-earned reputation for delivering relevant results to users. In fact, advertisers pay less for their messages when they meet certain standards in Google’s quality score, which is based in part on how relevant the ad’s copy, keywords, and landing page are to the user’s query.
This another reason why retargeting is effective. These ads are not random messages clammering for your attention, but specific offers that you, the user, have expressed interest in. Ad networks and social media sites also offer deep targeting filters that allow you to limit your reach to people with specific interests, incomes, group memberships, and other factors that define who they are.
Try new ad formats
It’s worthwhile to experminet with different ad formats. This Swoop survey is good place to start. The report summarized consumer responses about various online advertising strategies, asking respondents to rate each tactic. Search ads got the highest percentage of “I like them” responses (5.2 percent, compared to 1.9 percent for both intertextual and interstitial ads), and only a third of consumers expressed outright hate for them (compared to nearly 60 percent for pop-up ads).
The survey also highlighted banner ads, native ads, and social ads on the less intrusive (and more likely to be successful) side of the spectrum. Focusing your budget on these tactics is a better way to get positive attention on your brand.
“Set It and Forget It” ad Design
Whether using banner ads, a pay-per-click campaign, or sponsored posts on social media, you should never let your ad copy grow stale. I’ve seen some local ads that have been running for ten years or more. Believe me, these businesses are not doing themselves any favors.
Refreshing the ad copy does take a little time and money, but neglecting this task can have several unintended consequences. First, you could miss changes in the competitive landscape. Failing to monitor your ads will leave you unprepared for a new competitor in your space. Updating your campaigns regularly keeps your finger on the pulse of what is happening outside your door.
Secondly, stale ad design makes your brand look lazy and uninspired. Customers get tired of seeing the same commercials on TV for months, and they don’t like seeing the same ad over and over online either. If you never update the creative, your target market will eventually tune out. In some cases, the ad might even become out of date. Your ads are supposed to help your company stand out, grab attention, and inspire people to action. You can’t do that if the message is annoying them.
Advertising doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You need to think about the context in which your messages appear to customers. By working to keep your ads fresh, creative, an