7 Effective Steps in Planning an Ad Campaign

Planning an advertising campaign is a crucial stage in any company. If this is not done, advertising campaigns often become chaotic and random. It leads to a decrease in efficiency and an increase in advertising costs. Therefore, any advertising campaign requires serious preparation. Its planning should be done step by step:

1. Conducting advertising research – it is necessary to do this in certain areas. These include the study of the marketing situation and analyzing the initial competitive conditions in the market or its segment.
2. Determination of the target audience – it is essential to establish a portrait of the buyer and a list of advertised products and services.
3. Formation of goals of the planned advertising campaign – different services can form their own advertising goals.
4. Development of a creative advertising strategy – it is about the concept and the main grand idea of the advertising campaign.
5. Choosing the means of distribution of advertising – you need to decide on the frequency and timing of advertising in them. It is advisable to dwell on several options for advertising.
6. Determination of the actual size of funds – it is what will be used for advertising. Considering this, the adjustment of the advertising campaign plan is carried out. For example, suppose there is a shortfall in the allocated funds. In that case, it is allowed to change the frequency of advertising, reduce the publication area, or change the broadcast time of the advertising message.
7. Making a detailed plan of placement and publication of advertising – You will have to specify the means of distribution of advertising, the frequency of messages, and timing. All this must be clarified and coordinated according to the real money allocated to the campaign. You can use a DSP (Demand Side Platform) to purchase ad placements on other websites easily

One of the most critical stages of planning is to define goals. They should be formulated concretely and clearly. As a rule, you describe them in economic or communicative efficiency parameters. It can be, for example, bringing the knowledge of a new product to 80% of the target audience or increasing sales by 10%. The goal should be realistic and achievable.

What else is worth knowing when planning?

When determining the target audience, you should consider that there may be many potential consumers of the product. However, only a few will become real customers. Not all potential consumers represent a great interest for the advertiser. And only the part, that can pass into the category of leading customers, has the right to be called a target audience.

The study of the target audience helps to form hypotheses about the general motives of the target group’s purchasing behavior. Therefore, it is worth using this when developing the main grand idea of the advertising campaign, designing the creative concept and advertising messages, and choosing the optimal channels of advertising information.

It is essential to establish the term and duration of the campaign and the frequency of repetition of information. The duration of an intensive action system is often determined by the average time to make an acquisition decision. It is usually 2-4 weeks.

Another thing to remember when planning is that it does not make sense to run an uninterrupted campaign for a long time in most cases. It will be much better to take a break between active advertising periods. This will be correct to focus on the seasonality of customer demand and to plan the peaks of the campaign. It will give time to develop an interest in the advertised product.

The self-serve platform for advertisers allows to launch, control, and optimize advertising campaigns using extended information panels with an easy and understandable interface, which has a lot of advantages. It includes the ability to set up multi-level targeting and calculate potential reach before launching a campaign.

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