An ad optimization strategy is all about effectiveness -- ensuring advertising has every opportunity to meet expected goals. So, what is an ad optimization strategy?
First, understand that marketing has two sides:
advertising side (you)
Optimization is testing whether the message you developed will be well received. You test a single creative factor of your "advertising side" (such as your call-to-action, offer or design) early in your marketing campaign with a small sampling of your "response side", so you can make subtle improvements for maximum results. Once you've done a beta test, you can broadcast the refined creative to your remaining target audience with confidence. For Internet advertising, you beta test early in your launch (you cannot do a sampling) based on performance numbers. WebTrends estimates this effort will give you an average of 50%-80% greater response.
Whereas you may only do this optimization once in an email campaign, you should expect to conduct optimization of Internet advertising with higher frequency depending on the length of your media buy. For example, in a 3-month buy have your tracking vendor ready to start sending traffic results (to drive/identify first optimization tweaks) in Week Three, and expect to repeat (reassess) at least biweekly until satisifed with traffic or conversion numbers.
Now, what needs to change, other than the ad, to improve numbers? The answer is the landing page and related pages/links. Always perform tweaks across all campaign points: ads and the landing page, related pages, confirmation screens, etc.
Of course all this leads to other supporting questions:
-- how do you set up the tracking?
-- what should be tracked?
-- how do you establish goals/success?
-- how do you find the right partners/vendors?
-- what does a good Internet media buy look like?
We can help your planning -- email us with any 'optimization' questions
