Paid Media is an essential part of any performance strategy but how can you best identify inefficiencies and get more out of your current paid traffic?
Making the case for UX Design
A successful paid advert will be in the right place, at the right time, targeting the right audience, with the right message. Paid media campaigns excel at driving traffic to your website, acquiring users in a short space of time. This presents an ideal opportunity for your audience to learn about your brand and for you to learn about your audience. Your website needs to be the perfect environment to collect data and behavioural insights without depending on third-party platforms and their tracking capabilities, as these processes will soon become redundant.
Once a user is on your site, you only have seconds to grab their attention and get them interested, and UX tactics can help you quickly gain trust, brand recognition and retention. However, driving traffic through paid advertising is just the beginning of a journey of persuasion, nurture and influence.
How UX research benefits your Paid Media strategy
UX research enables you to go beyond basic demographics by delving into quantitative and qualitative data. By conducting UX research, you gain a richer understanding of your target audience and their behaviours. User interviews and surveys unveil their motivations, pain points, and preferred content formats. Clickmaps analysis and heatmaps, such as hotjar, provide a visual tour of their journey, highlighting friction points and areas for optimisation. These insights empower you to create:
Laser-focus targeting
Craft messaging that resonates with specific user segments based on their needs and preferences. Imagine your ads speaking directly to their pain points, offering solutions they genuinely need. This targeted approach leads to higher click-through rates and reduces ad spend on irrelevant audiences.
Personalised creative & landing pages
Ditch generic ad copy and bland landing pages. UX research informs you what kind of visuals, language, and offers captivate your audience. Constantly refining your approach based on new data points and insights for maximum engagement.
Frictionless conversion flow
Imagine users seamlessly navigating your website, guided by intuitive design and clear calls to action. UX research helps identify and eliminate confusing elements, streamlining the conversion process. This translates to fewer abandoned carts and higher conversion rates, directly impacting your campaign’s ROI.
Joint experimentation
Optimising paid media campaigns solely based on intuition and instinct has its limitations. While tinkering with keywords and bids yields incremental improvements, true leaps in efficiency and results require a more robust approach; joint experimentation.
Combining in-platform experiments with on-site testing unlocks a goldmine of insights about your audience and their experience. Imagine seamlessly linking different ad variations to corresponding landing page layouts, calls to action, and even website content. This holistic approach empowers you to:
- Challenge the status quo: Go beyond A/B testing minor tweaks and explore bold hypotheses that could revolutionise your user experience. Test creative elements like interactive ads or personalised landing pages that dynamically adapt based on user data.
- Uncover unexpected insights: By observing how users interact with both your ads and your website, you gain a complete picture of their journey. Identify friction points, uncover hidden biases, and discover unexpected opportunities to add value to your audience.
- Maximise returns: By optimising every touchpoint, from the initial ad impression to the final conversion, you can significantly improve campaign performance and maximise your return on investment.
Of course, joint experimentation requires more planning and coordination. Integrating data sets, aligning teams, and managing the sheer volume of information can be challenging. However, the rewards far outweigh the initial complexity. By breaking down the silos between paid media and website optimisation, you unlock a world of data-driven insights and pave the way for optimised touchpoints that all feel part of the same brand experience.
Humanising the metrics
CPMs, CTRs, CPAs, ROAS and CVRs are among many metrics that a typical performance dashboard might include. While they’re crucial data points, it’s easy to overlook the fact that each metric represents a real person, with unique challenges, experiences, and desires. Focusing solely on numerical optimisation misses the bigger picture – which is understanding the people you’re targeting.
This is where humanising metrics come in. It’s about moving beyond cold, hard numbers and embracing the emotional and psychological dimensions of user behaviour. By leveraging UX research, joint experimentation, and data analysis with an empathetic lens, you unlock a powerful understanding of your audience.
The difference between an ad targeting a demographic and one that speaks directly to a user’s aspirations is a big one. Instead of generic messaging, consider the young professional desperately seeking a fulfilling career path. Your ad could offer relevant resources and highlight how your product/service empowers them. This shift from “selling” to “connecting” fosters engagement and builds trust, leading to better results.
