Top 5 Digital Advertising Mistakes & Lessons Learned

CMN Marketing Solutions from Hugh Macken of VMR Communications

Over the last ten years, I've had the opportunity to work on digital ad campaigns for universities, book publishers, films, charities, and local businesses. In that time, I’ve made my share of mistakes and learned lessons from those mistakes along the way. Here are five of the many mistakes I made and the lessons you can learn from them.

• Unrealistic Expectations

  This is number one for a reason. When I first started planning and executing digital ad campaigns, I expected that the ads would result in immediate sales. I thought the process went something like this: 1. See an ad. 2. Click on the ad. 3. Buy the product promoted in the ad. That's direct response advertising, right? I learned the hard way that it doesn't quite work like that. Not by a long shot. Getting results from advertising takes extensive planning, effective creative and repeat exposure. Although the tactics of digital advertising are vastly different from offline advertising, the fundamentals - despite what others may say - remain the same.

• Poor Planning

  Speaking of planning, with most of my campaigns, I only had a Plan A and typically that was to sell something like a book or a ticket to an event or a donation opportunity. The reality is that most people don’t click on ads (as we’ll see in #4 below) and they are are not ready to purchase the product you are promoting right away. And if all you're doing is promoting a product and not the solution to a problem they have, they won't buy what you're selling. So I learned to position products and services within the context of the problems my target audience is experiencing.

• Not Storytelling

  In order to position products and services within the context of the problems your target audience is experiencing, you need to understand their story. And your target audience they needs to understand and believe your story and how the two stories mesh in helping your target audience to solve the problem they are experiencing. The problem I ran into here was knowing how to do this. I needed a framework. And I found one in the StoryBrand framework, which I highly recommend to build your brand by telling your story within the context of your target audience's story. As the saying goes, "facts tell, stories sell."  You can read more about StoryBrand here

• Not Understanding How Different Tactics Work Together

  In a typical display ad campaign, one can reasonably expect somewhere around two valid clicks for every 1,000 displays (referred to as "impressions") of your banner ad. That works out to a click thru rate (CTR) of 0.20%. On search ads you can expect a click thru rate of approx 5 to 10%. So I initially thought that meant that it made little sense to spend money on display ads. What was the point of paying for advertising where the click thru rate was so low? How could my client sell their widgets if no one clicked? The reality is that before your prospective customer will be willing to buy what your selling, they have to know who you are and see themselves as potentially part of your organization’s story. And you can, in fact, do that very effectively through a well-designed banner creative - and yes, even one that is not clicked. And that can then help set the foundation for search ads that promote your product within the context of that story.

• Not Cultivating Leads

  Many of the clients I've worked with had nicely designed websites but did not have a landing page and a lead magnet within that landing page specifically related to the campaign we were running. So although the ads were reaching the right audience and visitors were clicking through to the client websites, visitors were not buying what we were selling. They visited the page and "bounced", never to be seen again. They didn't become leads because we never got their contact info. And we never got their contact info because we did not have a lead magnet on the landing page. As OptinMonster.com explains here, a lead magnet is “an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address or other contact information.” You can read more about lead magnets here. I now insist, before running any ad campaign, that clients we work with always have a well-designed landing page, with a lead magnet that is likely to generate leads.

These are only five of the many mistakes I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned, thanks be to God, from making those mistakes. I still make mistakes and you will too. Perhaps the most important lesson of all is that we can, as Christians, rest assured and be truly thankful that it really is okay to make mistakes with our Catholic digital advertising efforts because “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Hugh Macken is the founder and president of VMR Communications LLC, a Catholic digital ad agency, founded in 2008, that specializes in digital advertising strategy, creative and performance optimization. VMR is short for “Ave Maria.”