If you want to improve an outcome, you typically have two options: You can increase inputs into a system or refine the system itself to yield more using the same resources. A farmer who wants to grow more parsnips, for example, can either sow a greater number of seeds or improve pest-defense techniques to allow a greater percentage of seeds to sprout.
Ad campaign optimization follows the second approach. Instead of increasing ad spend or labor, campaign optimization aims to improve results by adjusting the strategy and process. Here’s what ad campaign optimization is and five best practices to help you get the most out of your advertising investments.
What is advertising campaign optimization?
Advertising campaign optimization refers to any activity designed to help an ad campaign achieve specific goals. When applied to new ad campaigns, optimization involves identifying a specific objective and using advertising best practices to increase the campaign’s ability to achieve this goal. When applied to ongoing campaigns, optimization typically means reviewing campaign performance and adjusting variables to produce better results.
5 tips for optimizing a campaign
- Choose the right goals and metrics
- Align strategy with customer journey
- Diversify tactics, channels, and media types
- Use the right tools
- Monitor campaign performance
Ad campaign optimization strategies require careful planning, measurement, and data analysis. These best practices can help you simplify the process and improve your results:
1. Choose the right goals and metrics
Campaign optimization starts with choosing the right campaign goal and corresponding KPI. Good campaign goals support broader business and marketing objectives. For example, a marketing team might optimize a digital ad campaign for website traffic to support the broader company goal of raising brand awareness.
Once you’ve identified a campaign goal, the next step is selecting the metrics that will define campaign success. A campaign trying to increase relevant traffic to its site might measure total site visits and click-through rate (CTR), while one focused on optimizing conversions might measure total conversions, conversion rate, total leads generated, and clicks through to advertising landing pages.
2. Align strategy with customer journey
Effective ad campaigns center the customer's buying journey, which refers to the steps prospects take prior to and including conversion. The customer journey (or buyer journey) is often divided into three distinct stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.
- Awareness is the phase in which a new lead learns of your brand. Target this stage of the funnel to generate leads.
- Consideration is the phase in which a lead gathers more information about your company and begins to form an opinion about your products or services. Target this funnel stage to improve brand reputation and increase the likelihood of a purchase.
- Decision is when the lead makes a purchase and becomes a paying customer. Target this stage of the funnel to encourage purchases.
Customers at different stages in this journey have different needs, meaning that different types of ad content may be necessary. Understanding which part of the journey you’re targeting can help you set goals and refine your ad strategy.
3. Diversify tactics, channels, and media types
Ad campaign optimization also involves publishing engaging media across different channels. Artem Kuzmichev and Richard Mabley, founders of Transformer Table, spoke on the Shopify Masters podcast about the importance of a diversified ad strategy.
“Diversification obviously is also key to any business really, but especially in ecommerce,” Artem says. “We're still seeing amazing results from advertising on Meta, [but] what happens if Facebook isn’t a thing anymore? … You have to diversify to other channels.”
In addition to reducing your risk exposure, diversifying can increase your total reach and allow you to adjust based on concrete data about how each media type, tactic, or channel performs.Here’s an overview of diversification strategies:
- Use multiple channels. Many advertisers use multiple channels—such as ads on different social media platforms or podcast, radio, and video platforms—to execute a single campaign. Running effective multichannel campaigns can increase your total reach and help you connect with different sections of your target audience who may be active on different channels.
- Use multiple media types. Multimedia planning involves creating content using different media types, such as images, text, audio, and video. This strategy can help you increase the odds that your target audiences are served impressions in their preferred format.
- Diversify tactics. In addition to diversifying channels and media types, you can also diversify tactics within channels. For example, you might use Google ads to run retargeting ads (ads that target those who have visited your website), search ads (that show up on search engine results), and PPC (pay-per-click) ads, increasing your total reach and providing valuable performance data for comparison.
4. Use the right tools
Using the right tools can help you optimize digital ad campaigns. For example, using a centralized product catalog for all your advertising efforts can help you manage product inventory and monitor traffic to your online store. Some campaign management tools can also help you organize and store media assets and support campaign analysis.
5. Monitor campaign performance
Ongoing performance tracking is a critical part of advertising campaign optimization. For each tactic and channel, plan for how to track performance. For digital campaigns, this often involves using Google Analytics to track key website performance metrics like total website visits, bounce rates, and top traffic sources.
It also involves monitoring campaign data provided by individual ad platforms or vendors. For example, Google Ads provides an ad quality score and reports on metrics, including impressions, conversions, and CPC.
Once you have enough data, schedule a formal review of your campaign's performance. Consider holding reviews both during and after each campaign run. Mid-campaign reviews can allow you to adjust ongoing campaigns, and reviews held after a campaign ends can allow you to consolidate data, compare results to past campaigns, and gain valuable insights to inform future optimization efforts.
Benefits of campaign optimization
- Better performance tracking
- Improved campaign performance
- Higher return on investment
- Long-term business growth
Optimizing your advertising strategies can boost profits and help you reach your long-term business goals. Here’s an overview of the benefits:
Better performance tracking
Ad optimization involves identifying a specific goal for every ad campaign your company implements and key performance indicators (KPIs) corresponding to campaign goals.
For example, if you decide to optimize your social media campaigns for engagement, your corresponding KPIs may be the total number of engagements and engagement rate. Linking each campaign to a specific optimization goal and KPI can improve your team’s ability to measure campaign performance, allowing you to make informed decisions about budget allocation across advertising initiatives.
Improved campaign performance
Campaign optimization can help you adjust your current campaign strategies based on performance data and apply data-driven insights to future campaigns. It can also support your marketing efforts.
For example, campaign optimization can help you identify target keywords that resonate with your audiences, and conversion measurement can provide deeper insight into which keywords are most directly linked with purchases. Marketing teams can then apply this information to future advertising and marketing campaigns.
Higher return on investment
Successful campaign optimization can help boost your brand’s visibility on search engines, reach a wider audience, and target potential customers based on their need for a specific product or service, all of which can increase conversions and boost ROI on your company’s ad spend.
Campaign optimization also improves your ability to accurately measure ROI, allowing you to make informed decisions about ad spend and further improve performance.
Long-term business growth
Requiring advertising teams to identify a specific goal for each campaign can also help you confirm that your ad strategies support your business’s larger goals.
For example, you might optimize a digital campaign both for click-through rate (CTR) to support the broader company goal of raising brand awareness and for conversion rate to support the goal of increasing sales.
Campaign optimization FAQ
How do you optimize an ad campaign that is underperforming?
To optimize your ad campaign, begin by confirming that the metrics you’re using align with the campaign goals. Diversify your channels, tactics, and media types, and see what areas are performing well. You can then reallocate your campaign budget to higher-performing strategies.
How do you analyze and optimize campaign performance?
Here’s how to analyze and optimize campaign performance:
- Compile campaign data.
- Identify high- and low-performing channels, tactics, and individual ads.
- Reallocate budget to higher-performing strategies.
- Use performance data to adjust low-performing ads.
- Monitor performance.
What are the top KPIs to track for campaign optimization?
Popular ad campaign KPIs include total impressions, total site traffic, click-through rate (CTR), engagement rate, and conversion rate.
