Nowadays, we live in a digital world where almost everything happens online. The main reason this has become a major trend is that online activities are more convenient. You want to shop? Visit an eCommerce store. You want to get informed? Read online articles. You want to attract more customers to your business? Engage in digital marketing.

The online world simply offers a lot of opportunities to both consumers and businesses. These days, almost every company operates online. The main reason is digital marketing. When you consider the fact that the majority of the world’s population browses the internet, it’s only logical that you want to be where your potential customers are.

Digital marketing can easily help you reach out to a lot of people at once in a relatively short time period. Moreover, you can do it on a budget and still get sizeable results. Therefore, any business that wants to have an effective ad campaign online can ensure that it’s cost-effective. In other words, you don’t have to go overboard with spending to get what you need. With that in mind, here’s how to make an ad campaign more cost-effective.

1. Determine your budget

It’s no secret that creating digital marketing strategies or ad campaigns costs money. Yes, you have to spend at least something to jump-start your campaign. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll need a budget like the one large brands or enterprises have.

After all, how else would startups and small businesses manage to survive in such a competitive market? That said, consider your budget and how much you can actually spend on an ad campaign. This will allow you to choose the right channels that are available to you.
Even then, there are strategies you can use to ensure further cost-effectiveness so that you’re not spending your money in vain.

Here’s a good example. You may already know that Google’s AdWords can be quite costly, especially if you rank for very competitive keywords. But if you do a bit of keyword research, you can opt for less competitive keywords that are cheaper and still be able to target the right audience with your ads.

2. Leverage social media

Social media platforms have become the very core of digital marketing campaigns. That said, they’re free to use as you see fit. The only thing that will cost you is an ad campaign but we’ll get to that later. Before you start an ad campaign on any social media that supports it, such as Facebook or LinkedIn for example, you have to ensure that it’s cost-effective.

You can do so by doing a bit of research on your target audience and engaging with them in the right way. Over time, you will build a good relationship with them based on trust and engagement. Now, depending on the nature of your business, your target audience may be quite a large consumer base.

Getting them all on board would draw a lot of resources and time from your company. The good thing is that you don’t have to get to them all. You only need to get some of the influential members of your audience on board and create social proof that will work in your favor.

3. Incorporate your efforts into your ad campaign

Once you’ve established a presence on social media and gained a bit of trust from your audience, you can prepare a cost-effective ad campaign. Moreover, if you managed to secure support from some influencers, then everything may go even more seamlessly.

Once you’ve created custom social proof, it will help you save big on your online advertising campaigns and decrease acquisition costs. All you need is a reliable conversion rate optimization tool and you’re good to go. So, how does it all work?

Social proof is basically a psychological effect a lot of marketers leverage to give a much-needed boost to their marketing campaigns. You see, if you have a budget, you can make well-designed and elaborate ad campaigns.

However, if you leverage social proof, then you don’t really have to make such campaigns. Simply put, social proof act as a social phenomenon where people copy the actions of others.

Therefore, if a social media influencer endorses your product, other members of your audience will most likely consider buying it. Look at it this way: if an influential person you follow appears in an ad endorsing a product, then they know something you don’t. You will, therefore, undertake a specific behavior in a given situation so that you can fit in.

4. Give Amazon a try

The purpose of ad campaigns is to help you boost your product sales while not overspending on ads in the process. After all, you want to see a return on investment, so the goal is that your ads cost less while the income of your sales exceeds those costs.

Pretty simple when you look at it but it’s rarely so. Google or Facebook ad campaigns target a specific audience. You have to convince consumers to consider making a purchase in the first place. Amazon, who is the third largest seller of ads, works a bit differently than the other two. With Amazon ads, you actually target people who are already willing to buy.

In other words, you’re targeting buyers instead of simple viewers. That means that you can basically skip the part where you try to convince consumers to even consider buying and target those who are already prepared to make a purchase. This allows you to create more cost-effective ads with a specific purpose in mind. The cost per click (CPC) on Amazon is around $0.35 which is cheaper than Google or Facebook ads.

Cost-effective ad campaigns don’t necessarily mean that they are cheap. You will spend as much as you can or want on ads but the point is in getting the best bang for your buck while doing so. Cost-effectiveness really means that you get your money’s worth and perhaps even earn more than you have spent to create your ad campaign, to begin with.

Image credit- Canva