Professional stand-up comedians are known to practice their routines with smaller audiences in preparation for their big shows and HBO specials. They do this in order to find out what works and what doesn’t and to hone all the elements of their routine: timing, delivery, wording, and so on. That way, when they hit the big […]  Ratko Vidakovic on April 29, 2013, at 9:00 am

To prepare for their major gigs and HBO appearances, professional stand-up comedians often rehearse their routines with smaller crowds. So they can learn what works and doesn’t work and fine-tune their routine, which includes everything from time to delivery to phrasing and everything in between. Having done this, they will be confident in their routine when they go onto the stage.

Eric Ries, in his book The Lean Startup, describes a “lean startup” method. Using the “build-measure-learn” cycle, he argues that companies should focus on figuring out how consumers react to a product before investing significant resources into its development.

What is it about this strategy that appeals to both comedians and start-ups? You may take a more calculated risk when you know what has worked in the past.

We are now going to present a similar architecture for “lean” display advertising. Marketers may identify the most effective aspects of a campaign before devoting higher expenditures by utilizing real-time bidding (RTB) as an efficient way to experiment with campaigns and obtain insights before expanding with direct buys.

A look at the four strategic stages of this lean display ad technique is in order:

As part of Phase 1: Create Your Test Campaigns

“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” as the saying goes.
David Ogilvy, 19th-century advertising guru

The use of A/B testing in the creation of eye-catching display advertising cannot be overstated. Your advertising campaign should be the finest possible. But how can you tell whether the ad you published is the most innovative, engaging, and fascinating display ad? The only way to be positive is to do A/B tests and compare your concepts. It’s important to analyze the outcomes as well! As a reminder, even while not all tests will be successful, ads that are A/B tested tend to perform better than those that are not tested.

A/B testing in banner advertising was and still is, a laborious process until recently. Even simple banner ad A/B tests would take days or weeks and need full teams of workers. Banners hadn’t yet adopted A/B testing in the same manner as emails or landing pages.

A/B testing the old-fashioned Way

It was difficult for a marketer who wished to do A/B tests. Changing the wording in one of your adverts would need re-creating the whole banner in your design application. What if you wanted to compare the effectiveness of two images side by side? The whole banner gets reworked and republished.

This would need resizing and reanimating objects every time. A necessary evil in order to preserve the preceding ad’s quality. For example, you may give the publisher a fresh version of your ad, which would be published for a certain period of time or a predetermined number of impressions. You’re always crossing your fingers that your newly optimized ad will outperform the old one. This, of course, would need a lot of effort and money.

A lot of money and effort.

A/B testing with First Prince Marketing

With the Bannerflow platform, a marketer may make modifications to current banner advertising without having to republish them, making A/B testing a lot easier. Every display ad, regardless of its dimensions, aesthetics, or content, undergoes continuous revision in the real world as it is published.

Consider once again the case of a shop experimenting with a display campaign element to see whether it affects customer engagement. Rain boots may be swapped for sandals if the weather suddenly shifts. It’s simple for a marketer to adjust the wording, call-to-action, or pictures in Bannerflow’s builder. You don’t even need to contact your ad network or restart your campaign to make this ad edit. Analytical data may be used to monitor and improve outcomes.

Optimize by doing a split test

You see, once you begin utilizing Bannerflow’s scheduling tool, something magical occurs. Using this application, you may simultaneously conduct two campaigns and track their progress in real-time.

Using this method, you can quickly determine which of your campaigns is doing the best. Analyze and run them all at once using the scheduling tool. Depending on the outcomes, you may even assign a different weighting to each campaign. Alternately, you may decide how frequently each ad variation is presented.

Changing one or both of the active campaigns in Bannerflow is completely possible! You don’t have to worry about republishing your banners once you’ve made changes to them in the editor. It’s a simple modification that refreshes the banners, unlike other programs.

Finally, your real-time evaluation is back! Check out how your campaigns are doing using Bannerflow’s analytics tool.

Again, you have the option to favor one over the other using the scheduling tool. Set up one offer a few days after another, which is a cinch to do. Sit back and watch the impressions pour in once you’ve selected your campaigns and the dates for them.

Apply A/B testing when retargeting

When retargeting, A/B testing is essential. To be clear, while creating retargeting advertising, it’s more critical than ever to use a variety of creative approaches. A study by Retargeter indicated that failing to update creative results in worse performance, which the company confirmed with actual customer data. According to their findings, click-through rates plummet by nearly half after running the same advertisements for five months! As a result, A/B testing is essential if you want to ensure that your advertising is both relevant and as effective as possible. When it comes to retargeting, it’s all about the conversions!

When it comes to internet marketing, the same holds true. Regardless of where your campaign is in its lifecycle, A/B testing may help you create display ads that are specific to that stage. A/B testing is a great way to find the best creative for a certain goal, such as a conversion. When you include A/B testing into the development of display ads, you enjoy the benefits.

Data Analysis Is The 2nd Phase.

When it comes to B2B display ad campaigns, there are a few things you need to know before getting started. In this post, we’ll look at ways to evaluate the campaign’s success in terms of its ability to deliver on your objectives.

Measuring the success of your B2B display program should be simply provided your campaign goals and KPIs have been clearly defined throughout the planning phase. If you’re looking to target certain audiences, you may do it with display advertisements, much like lead-generating programs (BOFU). Your campaign is successful if it achieves its goals, KPIs, and target audience.

Tracking the correct data is essential to determining the effectiveness of your B2B display campaign. Some of the goals we outlined in the last post include promoting consideration of your brand, attracting qualified visitors, and enhancing user experience.

In order to achieve these goals, you’ll want to keep an eye on the following metrics:

• You’ll be tracking Conversions: As an example, if your display advertising brings visitors to a landing page that allows them to fill out an online form, download an asset, or make a purchase.
• You’ll see an increase in Engagement: If your advertising links the audience to a web page or an online tool like an ROI calculator.
• You’ll see an increase in site Visitors: If your campaign is bringing TOFU prospects to a page on your website or to your homepage.

The number of people that visit your website is an indicator of interest from potential customers. However, don’t be scared to go a bit further into your information. It’s preferable to get people to come to your website but to keep them there is even better.

Measuring the Impact of Display Advertising

A campaign’s engagement rate may be calculated by dividing your goals by the total number of impressions. To put it another way, your advertising campaign generated 200 clicks to your online ROI calculator from 10,000 display impressions.

To put it another way, 200 interactions per 10,000 impressions is equal to 2%

A cost-per-action (CPA) or cost-per-result statistic may be calculated by dividing the cost of your campaign by the number of interactions. If you spent $15,000 on your ad and got 250 people to use your calculator, you paid $60 per action.

$15,000 divided by 250 is $60 for every action or $60 for each encounter.

The amount of data you may examine in order to assess the performance of your display campaign is limitless, but you should avoid being overwhelmed by it. An in-depth analysis of some of the metrics accessible to you is probably not necessary. Consider the long-term impact of your company measurements.

Some of the less useful statistics to monitor include:

• Clicks. CTRs are low, and “serial clickers” among the audience have been responsible for a disproportionate percentage of clicks since the start of display advertising. Without a conversion or a good amount of time spent on the website, clicks have little value.
• Vanity Metrics. Metrics are used for nothing but show. Social media responses such as “likes,” “shares,” “upvotes,” and other “low-value” acts fall under this category. People who share or enjoy online stuff sometimes don’t even see it themselves.

Making the Most of Your Display Advertising

You may remove or minimize the frequency of bad performers over time by beginning your campaign with various ad creatives (i.e., the actual banner pictures or text links that comprise your advertising) and landing sites.

A/B testing data for landing pages are readily accessible on the internet. Marketers are always interested in how different headlines, colors, font sizes, and calls to action affect the success of creatives and landing sites. This is a favorite subject of theirs. In this case, the best advice is to figure out what works for your campaign and strike a balance between efficiency and over-analysis.

You run the risk of blaming your creatives and landing pages for your campaign’s failure if you spend too much time scrutinizing them. In order for your campaign to be successful, it must not only provide the proper message in the correct manner but also target the appropriate demographic. If tweaking your creatives and landing pages does not increase your B2B display program’s success, then it’s time to rethink your targeting choices.

Post-Campaign Review

Marketing initiatives that aren’t tied to purchase are notoriously difficult to evaluate. “Half the money I spend on advertising is squandered; the problem is that I don’t know which half,” department store mogul John Wanamaker is said to have said.

Fortunately, digital marketing provides marketers with measurements and insights to assist them to make smarter decisions. However, this does not imply that the data will provide the whole picture. How can you prove that a marketing effort was successful and that the money set aside to boost sales was well spent?

Assuming you have access to the data, compare your campaign’s acquisition cost against the lifetime value of your consumers. The worth of a customer’s average transaction, the average number of transactions per year, and the anticipated number of years the connection would endure are used to calculate lifetime value.

Average transactional value x average transactions per year x estimated relationship lifetime = Lifetime Value.

For most applications, the Return on Ad Spend (RoAS) is much simpler to compute. You may calculate the return on investment (ROI) simply by dividing the campaign’s income by its overall cost.

R.O.I. (Return on Advertising Investment) is calculated as follows:

It’s a little more difficult to compute Campaign Revenue since it uses the previously determined Lifetime Value and multiplies it by the total number of conversions your program generated and the closure rate (i.e., the rate at which your brand closes deals with leads).

Earning potential is equal to lifetime value multiplied by conversions multiplied by closing rate.

TOFU Goals Measuring Methods

Your B2B display campaign, on the other hand, may include TOFU objectives, such as boosting brand recognition. Every campaign produces data that can be used in a formula, but not all of them do.

Ad campaigns may have a significant impact on brand awareness and brand perception if the target population is surveyed before the campaign’s launch. After the campaign is over, the audience is re-surveyed to discover whether they have become more aware of the brand or have a more favorable opinion of it.

Improve Your Display Advertising Campaigns

Display advertising is a vital part of a B2B marketer’s arsenal of marketing techniques. Display advertising may help you boost brand recognition, enhance engagement, attract qualified visitors, and more if you take the time to prepare your campaign and analyze its effectiveness.

Phase 3 – Optimize Your Marketing Efforts

It’s time to remove the weak aspects of your campaigns and devote more money to the elements that are proving to be successful once a thorough data collection and analysis process has been completed. In the optimization phase, your objective is to enhance your campaigns by using the insights gained from the previous phase and putting them into action in a meaningful manner.

If particular aspects of a campaign — such as advertisements, placements, or websites — are determined to be underperforming, one method of improving the campaign is to deactivate or prune such pieces. This permits the pieces that perform well to get a higher percentage of the campaign’s resources, so increasing the total efficacy of the effort.

In addition, rising budgets, bid prices, and frequency limits (incrementally) in order to generate greater volume is another method of directing more resources to aspects and campaigns that are successful.

Optimization should be considered as a continuous process of learning from data and improving campaigns over time, rather than a one-time event. As soon as you have successfully optimized campaigns in your possession, the next natural step is to grow them.

Phase 4: Expand on Your Successes

What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.”
—Sun Tzu

In order to scale your campaigns with direct media buys, you must first gather real-world data (foreknowledge). Only then are you ready to commit time and money? The advertiser may see how RTB and direct buys complement each other here.

Using real-time bidding (RTB) to purchase display advertisements is already shown to be more efficient, thus your early testing and optimization should be done on platforms that can take advantage of RTB’s advantages. A better understanding of the market and your ability to approach publishers with confidence can help you get more inventory.

Consider the following exchange with a member of the advertising sales staff:

“We’re seeing good results from your inventory when we use RTB. In order to reserve additional inventory, we are ready to pay a little higher eCPM rate or commit to a set order amount.”

Advertisement sales representatives could then respond:

In exchange for a monthly payment of $X dollars and a CPM rate of $Y, we can certainly promise you Z million impressions every month.”

RTB is an excellent way for savvy publishers to prospect for direct sales. An advertiser would likely to desire more of the same inventory if they’ve had success with a certain website or publisher via RTB exchanges. Direct purchases from publishers (after testing, of course) make sense given the inherent unpredictability of RTB volumes.

Warning: this may not always be the best course of action in every situation. Direct buys may have CPM rates that are too high for you to meet your performance targets, so be sure to keep your key performance indicators in mind as you look into them.

If you want to learn more about the performance of certain publishers and target audiences before spending thousands of dollars on high-CPM direct buys, using RTB to purchase display advertisements is a great option. The publisher may then be approached directly to book your own inventory on an assured basis after you’ve located important locations

Advertisers may use this method to create effective display ad campaigns while also reducing risk and wasting money while also optimizing the amount of knowledge gained along the way.