The year was 1994, Modem Media bought rectangular advertising space for AT&T on HotWired.com to showcase the first ever display advertising ad aka “the banner.”
Though the ad might look obscure now, back then Modem Media’s experiment worked because the rainbow-colored ad generated a 44% click-through rate.
Fast forward to today and think about getting a 44% click-through rate.
Not going to happen since the average click-through rate for display ads is just 0.46%.
Back then, when the internet was just getting started, advertisers didn’t know their audience that well; they advertised for the masses rather than the individual user so they couldn’t target users nearly as well as is possible today.
That’s not the case anymore because a lot has changed in digital advertising the past two decades -- especially in terms of personalization.
Due to the sheer volume of online ads today, advertising space has become more competitive and expensive. Plus, consumers have become inundated with ads they don’t feel the urge to click until they feel it’s something they absolutely need or the ad is persuasive enough to earn that click.
For your agency to get your client’s campaign a lot of clicks, you must embrace the evolution of advertising personalization and create post-click experiences that allow you to increase ROI.
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Today’s article will help you do just that. We’ll start by defining what personalization is and why personalizing post-click experiences results in a higher ROI. We will also discuss how personalization and collaboration help save your agency’s time and streamlines advertising projects for your client campaigns.
Advertising personalization involves customizing online experiences and micro-targeting audiences based on user behavior and multiple data points collected by advertising platforms such as Facebook and Google.
Facebook collects 98 data points on its 2.2 billion users, while Google uses its seven unique products to collect personal information on its users that can fit on 569,555 sheets of paper. These data points or insights include basic demographic information, buying intent, and behavioral patterns.
Advertising personalization uses these insights to understand who the customer is, which helps increase the relevancy of any marketing message promoted to them.
You can take the information and data points collected on target users to create user segments with shared characteristics and develop separate marketing messages for each segment.
Before starting work on client campaigns, ensure that you are collecting the right data from web analytics, marketing automation, or CRM platforms.
For instance, Google Analytics collects audience browsing history, behavior data, and demographic data. And you can use marketing automation and CRM platforms to assemble user behavior data such as past purchases, website visits, emails opened, and live chat history.
Ensure all the platforms are synchronized properly and are collected metrics important for the campaign. Otherwise, you risk losing precious data that can deliver higher ROI.
After the campaign set up is done, it’s time to start personalizing the audience’s post-click experiences.
The post-click experience is everything that happens between the ad click and the conversion. These experiences start with an optimized post-click landing page and end with a personalized thank you page and email.
Consider the fact that PPC ads account for 64.6% clicks when users search online. Since you’re paying for each click, it’s mandatory you not waste any advertising spend by ruining the post-click experience with a page not focused on converting those clicks.
For example, Springbot’s email design lookbook ad takes users to a website page that features the offer, but the page is more of a browsing experience. The page is not dedicated to the offer since it includes a header navigation, demo request button, newsletter signup, related posts, and contact options.
First the ad and the corresponding landing page:
Compare that to an ad and landing page that optimizes the post-click experience. Intercom’s ad promotes the Growth handbook, and the page that follows is conversion-focused on the same offer.
Here’s the ad and the corresponding landing page:
Personalizing post-click experiences takes the user insights collected to create relevant, user-centric landing pages and connects them to ads.
Online users are more likely to click the call-to-action (CTA) button when you direct them to post-click landing pages built specifically for them -- ensuring the budget you spent on the ad click is not wasted.
Of course, this means more landing pages are necessary. However, because the experiences are designed specifically for the users who see it, they’re more likely to click the CTA button -- increasing the ROI of client campaigns.
Another way to increase client campaign ROI is to streamline how each agency member communicates during the process. Instead of having scattered conversations across different communication and work management tools such as Slack, Google Docs, email, and Asana, use a collaboration tool that allows each person to share their expertise and not slow down the campaign creation process.
Instapage’s Collaboration Solution allows team members to post comments, provide feedback, and resolve issues within the post-click landing page platform.
An effective collaboration tool allows each team member to weigh in on the project in a streamlined manner, which saves time and can increase client ROI.
Advertising personalization enables you to create one-to-one marketing messages, i.e. a brand making a consumer feel they are talking directly to them, and addressing their unique needs.
Connecting ads to optimized post-click landing pages continues the personalization of an ad whereas a website erodes that personalization by sending the potential customer to a generic “one size fits all” experience.
A user is more likely to avail the offer promoted via the landing page when they see the page makes it easy to redeem the offer and helps solve their problem – helping you increase campaign ROI.
Can you create landing pages the traditional way by sending mocked-up screenshots to team members, countless back-and-forth emails, and waiting for responses to make design changes?
Of course you can, but why settle for traditional? Leverage modern communication tools and truly personalize the post-click experience for audiences. Not only will you improve your workflow and get pages published faster without delay, but higher conversions from personalized pages, too.
About the author
Tyson Quick is the Founder and CEO of Instapage, the leader in post-click optimization. He founded Instapage in 2012 after seeing how performance and growth marketers were losing money in underperforming advertising campaigns. Since then his vision has been to create a suite of post-click optimization products that maximize returns through advertising personalization.
