8 Steps to Creating Online Display Ads That Work

Online display advertising continues to grow at a rapid pace. According to eMarketer, display advertising is expected to surpass search in 2023 for B2B ad spend, approaching $10 billion annually by next year.

Online display advertising is growing because it’s working. It offers a unique combination of reach and targeting. Online display has extensive reach, because it enables marketers to serve ads to a select audience no matter where that audience travels on the web. And it offers precise targeting, because of the availability of data on internet users.

Here are eight steps to creating online display ads that deliver ROI.

Improve Your Online Display Advertising with These 8 Tips

1. Determine your objective – awareness, consideration, or conversion – and target your audience no matter where they are in the marketing funnel.

Online advertising is a versatile advertising medium and can have an impact at any point in the funnel, reaching prospects, leads and current customers – and it is most effective when doing all three at the same time. For example, online advertising’s flexibility enables you to:

• Brand and build awareness to reach new prospects.
• Nurture prospects already in the funnel.
• Drive sales with special discounts aimed at customers already in your CRM system.
• Offer a full-funnel approach by doing all three simultaneously.
  

2. Create different ads and different calls to action based on where your prospects are in the marketing funnel. 

Online display advertising is all about building brand familiarity with your target audience to ultimately move prospects down your marketing funnel. For high-level branding campaigns, this may be as simple as encouraging prospects to visit your website. For mid-funnel targets, the ad could offer a white paper in exchange for the target’s contact information. For prospects near the bottom of the funnel, the offer might be a discount promotion on a specific product.

Learn more: How LinkedIn Tools Help Marketers Address the Full Funnel 

3. The best online display creative relies on sharp visuals, a provocative headline and brief copy.

The most effective display ads focus on a concise message and have a clear call to action. Draw the audience’s attention to a compelling image (or series of images in a carousel ad) to drive a specific action, such as visiting a landing page, downloading a white paper or ordering a discounted product. 

4. Consider using video to attract your audience.

When developing the creative, consider using video to attract attention on busy feeds. Video ads are effective for all three campaign objectives, whether you’re looking to bring your brand story to life or show your product in action. 

5. Make sure your landing pages are functional and user-friendly.

If your ad is sending users to a landing page, ensuring the destination delivers on the promise is essential. For instance, if you’re offering a white paper in the ad, make sure that white paper is easy to find and downloadable on the landing page.

6. When measuring ad impact, incorporate metrics beyond clicks.

Choosing the proper metrics is essential to gauge if your online campaign was effective or not. The metric most associated with online banners is clickthrough (CTR) which can provide, in broad strokes, a general idea of how well a particular display ad is performing. 

But most marketers and agency professionals look to other metrics, such as cost per conversion (CPC) or cost per lead (CPL), to measure the performance of a digital advertising campaign. Meanwhile, today’s industry leaders are focused on measuring brand performance and quantifying the long-term impact of B2B brand building.

7. Optimize your campaign by testing and by investing in the most effective ads.

Let data guide your decision-making with display ads. A simple optimization process is using basic A/B testing to see which creative or which offers perform best. A rigorous culture of testing is one of the best ways to keep your digital advertising strategy on the right track.

8. Use custom targeting to reach audiences that are familiar with your brand.

Creating initial brand awareness through online display ads is important, but of course, it’s also critical to keep building those associations and reach targeted high-value prospects with the right messages. Tools like Matched Audiences in LinkedIn help you reach professionals in powerful ways such as account targeting, importing an existing list of contacts or retargeting.

Ready to put your brand’s best qualities on display? Create an ad and let the world know.