How Ad Optimization Helps You Go Places

2. Invest Right!

In the world of advertising, your budget most often causes the biggest conundrum. Like Lord Leverhulme once famously said:

“I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half.”

Your advertisement budget will depend on the form of business you have, and can range from 1% to nearly 10% of your sales. At the initial stages it might be a good idea to keep your advertising costs low, but once you have established some stability and your product returns a predictable sales pattern, you may want to amp up your advertising budget to the industry average. Or you could use any of the other marketing techniques that you think might work, but you definitely need to avoid a residual approach to advertising. What this means is that you need to understand that advertising is a necessary part of business, and associate marketing objectives with the level of advertising.  This will automatically have you invest in the right amount of visibility.

3. Avoid Premature Optimization

Optimizing a small ad campaign is a colossal waste of time, effort and the oh-so-important money. You can anyway judge the trajectory of your campaign only after you have run into a million or more impressions, and only then does further optimization and a bigger investment matter. As Donald Knuth said:

“Early optimization is the root of much evil. “

The idea is to sit tight on the optimization itch till your campaign has had a realistic number of impressions which may now influence your decision about how to optimize it, or what needs to be changed. Before that, it might be a better idea to wait and watch.

4. Implement Conversion Tracking

In order to transmit conversion information, you need to add a tracking pixel that gives you the tightest feedback loop.  This means that you add a 1×1 pixel image, also called a web beacon, to relay information about a page view. Assuming that you are a smart marketer who needs to know everything possible about his product and ad campaign, this can be your most handy tool. Another advantage is how you can tweak your campaign for higher returns through web beacon realyed information.

5. Control Your Traffic

Find out about the source of traffic and then weed out what is not relevant to you. Enable viewing from better websites, and control more as your traffic stabilizes. Higher quality traffic would mean a chance of higher CTRs, and therefore optimization if of paramount importance here.

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