How to Avoid Unwanted Clicks in Digital Advertising
Digital ad spending is expected to increase 20.4% in 2021. It will outpace other forms of ad spending this year. While digital advertising is about getting the click, unwanted clicks are driving up ad costs while driving down ad effectiveness.
Not All Engagement Is Desirable
Some marketers covet social media engagement. Follows, likes, comments and retweets are admirable. Many consider clicks to be the golden key to digital media. After all, you can learn so much from a click. A click can tell you the preferred time of day that your prospect likes to shop or research. A click may tell you a prospect’s location. You may learn a prospect’s preferred product feature just by observing what ads they click or do not click on.
Clicks are important and insightful, but not all clicks are desirable. In fact, a click on every media impression would be problematic and costly for most advertisers. I help clients identify the clicks they want as well as the ones they do not want. By avoiding unwanted clicks, they use their marketing budget more efficiently.
Minimize Irrelevant Clicks
Knowing when to avoid a click is a particularly useful skill for any organization using paid digital media. There are several strategies to employ to minimize irrelevant clicks on paid media. Minimizing these “bad” clicks will conserve ineffective spending. This leaves more budget for finding qualified prospects.
Simply put: advertisers should avoid paying for clicks when a potential prospect is not likely to make a purchase.
There are a few situations when this is clearly the case. For instance, when the prospect is outside of your geographical service area. It is easy to mitigate this risk with digital media by targeting a precise service area. A retailer with physical locations may target prospects within a certain distance of those locations or, perhaps, prospects who are frequently near those locations or prospects who live or work near those locations. A service provider may want to assess what distance prospects, technicians or deliverers will travel before promoting the service. An upfront assessment allows advertisers to set boundaries for digital advertising platforms to work within.
When the product is not aligned with price point, prospects are not likely to buy. When a prospect wants luxury goods, it is not likely that they will buy a cheap alternative and vice versa. If frugal buyer clicks on a digital ad for premium-priced products, acquisition costs will increase. Getting them to buy will require additional touches. Those touches come with a higher price tag.
Use Digital Advertising to Attract Qualified Prospects
Unwanted clicks are more likely when ambiguities exist. They are also likely when ads lack specificity. Consider an advertiser using “storage solutions” as a keyword. They may find a homeowner looking for a secondary storage unit. Clicks may come from an organizer looking for boxes. A person looking for cloud storage might click on their ad. The advertiser will want to narrow their pool of potential clicks to be most attractive toward their intended audience.
Adding product features to creative can help to reduce unwanted clicks in digital advertising. If a construction company exclusively builds ranch style homes but attracts clicks from buyers looking for two-story homes, the company is wasting advertising dollars.
Many potential buyers conduct research before reaching the decision stage. An advertiser may attract a buyer early in the buyer’s journey, even when looking for customers who are ready to buy now. The advertiser must be prepared to answer the question that the researcher asks. If the answer is not available on the app or website, the researcher may not revisit the site. The advertiser has just paid for an unwanted click.
Stop paying for unwanted clicks. Create a strategic framework to feed into your paid media platform to ensure that you attract the right prospects. If you need help creating that framework, let’s talk.
