Internet Marketing Digital_marketing_for_dummies | Page 260

Troubleshooting Paid Traffic Campaigns
After you’ve set up a paid traffic campaign, let it run for three to five days so that you can
start collecting data. When that time is up, you should assess and troubleshoot your
campaign. Although you’re looking for problems or why goals aren’t being met,
troubleshooting doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong with the campaign. The
goal of troubleshooting a campaign is to fix any problems that may have arisen since its
launch, but also to look for ways to optimize the campaign and possibly, if justifiable, to
scale the campaign.
We examine four areas to focus on and the steps to take when troubleshooting a paid traffic
campaign, as follows:
The offer
The targeting
The ad copy and creative
The ad’s congruency
With paid traffic, a lot of trial and error is involved in a campaign, even if you’ve done
everything right. At our company, for example, for every ten paid campaigns that we run,
only one to two break even or turn a profit. But that doesn’t mean that you should throw
away an underperforming campaign and start all over. With some digging, you can find
what’s holding back the campaign and get it back on track.
Make sure to examine each of the following areas one at a time so that you can
isolate the specific issue of your campaign. If you try to assess all the areas at one
time, you won’t understand the root cause or what ultimately fixed your campaign, so
you may end up facing the same problem in the future. Implement one step, run your
ad for an additional five days and collect more data, and then move on to the next
steps if necessary.
Read on for more details about troubleshooting each of these areas.
Strengthening your offer
The first aspect to focus on when your campaign isn’t performing as expected is your
offer. Ask yourself: Do people want what you’re selling? If you don’t offer something that
your market actually wants or needs, you won’t get conversions. To see whether your
offer is appealing, answer these three questions:
Are you solving a problem for a specific group of people?