I’ve Run a Paid Advertising Campaign, What Now?

So, you’ve completed your paid advertising campaign and you’re looking through the results – of course, as every marketing decision must be informed by data.

As we have stated previously, every campaign must go through the ‘learning’ process during which the platform on which you advertise makes informed decisions based on the results and costs. The first campaign for any school marketer can be a nerve-racking time, especially if admissions are not as high as had been expected and your efforts are being questioned. The question on every school marketers’ lips is: What on Earth do I do now?

What to do if your results were not as expected:

First and foremost you must learn from your mistakes. These are the questions that you must ask yourself:

• Was your targeting too defined and you missed out on prospective parents who did not match all of your criteria?

• Was your targeting too broad and you wasted money on targeting those who would never be interested in your school?

• Did you simply the whole of your county or even country? Facebook’s location targeting can be very precise and you can even exclude small areas from a larger targeted area. Handy tip: If you drop the pin on the map, you will be able to target down to just 1km or 1 mile. 

• Were your goals not set up correctly? You may have had some conversions but not been able to track them properly. 

• Did you include a call to action (CTA) in your ad? You must make the process as easy as possible while also making it enticing!

• Was your copy too bland? Nobody wants to send their child to the average school. Use your ad to show off your USPs. 

• What type of media did you use? Did you use a single image, a video, a carousel? 

• Did you use A/B testing to see which ad would perform better?

Lastly, do not worry! There are many reasons why you results may have turned out to be disappointing. The important thing is that you use this process to inform future decisions.

What to do if your results were positive:

Congratulations! Give yourself a pat on the back as your efforts were clearly visible and the leadership team at your school will truly see the value of digital marketing. However, do not get complacent and just repeat the same ad each campaign. Ask yourself how you can use these good results and build on these for the future?

• Your targeting and audience clearly worked and if you have saved the audience you will be able to use this again for future ads. However, be careful as if you use the same audience too many times, you will saturate the targeting and it will no longer being effective.

• Retargeting: If you correctly set up Facebook Pixel during your previous campaign, you will be able to use these results in many ways:

  • Create a lookalike audience based on those who showed interest in your ad. 

  • Retarget visitors who carried out a specific action after clicking through on the ad. 

  • Create user personas of those who signed up and use these in your targeting. 

• Although your ad was successful and ultimately boosted admissions or achieved the goal that you had aimed for, you must still ask yourself: what worked and what didn’t?

• Be more adventurous in your next campaign and try out A/B testing or a different format of ad. 

• Split your efforts and advertise on a different platform to compare.

All in all, the vital questions to ask yourself is what worked and what didn’t? Don’t lose heart and build on your learnings to take your ads to the next level.

Click here to read this article on the Interactive Schools website.