Paid Media Strategy Review Tips

These tips can help you review and ready your paid media strategy for the new year. Are you prepared?

As the new year approaches, it’s a great time to review your paid media strategy, even it is not in a formal plan. Here is a checklist to get you started and hopefully save you a little time as well.

Goals

A first priority is to review paid media goals. Oftentimes advertisers are too focused on the pursuit of revenue from paid media that they forget that occurs at the bottom of the funnel where potential customers are ready to buy. There are several top- and mid-funnel goals that should be considered:

  • Brand awareness
  • Lead generation
  • Content promotion
  • Market share growth

If one of these goals is appropriate, make a timeline to create and launch campaigns for these. It’s important to remember to set up conversion tracking, whether it is tracking code from the platform or tagging links so that you can view results in your website analytics programs.

Trends

It may also be helpful to review trends and determine if it makes sense to incorporate into the current plan. For example, in my post “Marketing Trends to Watch and Apply to PPC,” I write about reviews in AdWords ads. PPC advertisers can use review extensions to surface positive reviews. The review extensions attach a review line to the ad. If you have a review or award from a third-party publication or organization, this is good way to call it out. Reviews are not only for AdWords or consumer companies – any type of company or product would benefit from incorporating reviews or testimonials into paid media. This is only one example of considering how trends impact and can enhance your online marketing program.

review-extensions

Paid Media Channels

It’s important to review a selection of ad platforms on a regular basis to ensure you are reaching online audiences. Determine if one of these platforms can be added to the paid media mix.

Current Campaigns

Check your current campaigns to ensure they are all updated with the most recent features. AdWords and Bing Ads have some very interesting new features out that are important to consider when optimizing campaigns. Phone call conversions, mobile, and device targeting will be areas where features will continue to grow in 2015 and it’s better to start now. Likewise Twitter has created a Website Cards ad unit that is intended to drive website clicks or conversions from the social platform.

Do you have a great paid media strategy tip you can share? Tell us in the comments or tweet us @ClickZ or @LisaRocksSEM to discuss.

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