In order to gain a deeper understanding of internet advertising, it’s necessary to dig into some detail on the process. What makes some internet advertising projects outperform all the rest in terms of client satisfaction, ranking, and overall ROI? It helps to have a well-designed product from the start, good communication between the advertising agency and the client, and an acknowledgement of the critical steps along the way. It can be tempting to skip a step to save money, or meet a launch date. The information outlined here will help you resist the urge to cut the budget or the timeline. Whether you are an advertising agency, a client or customer, understanding the timeline from the first concept meeting to launch, tracking and testing is invaluable.
Milestone: Setup
Setting up the process right from the beginning avoids all number of problems. In this step, the advertising agency sets up an initial meeting based on the client’s availability. Listening is a critical skill for the agency, and clearly communicating needs is critical for the client. Based on the client’s goals, the agency goes back from the initial meeting to conduct further research.
Milestone: Creative Process
As the process continues to the creative side, the amount of involvement and work increases. Initially, the agency will select one or more advertising media to develop a concept around. Multiple iterations of these concepts might be reviewed, with the client providing input along the way. The creative process also involves the very practical step of selecting “Ad Creatives”, or key words used in pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Spending some time optimizing and targeting the keywords for the particular industry is well worth the return on investment in terms of converting customers.
As the creative process goes from concept to reality, programmers and coders start to get involved and discrete web pages will be developed, such as landing pages. Those pages will need more detailed review from the client, and as the coding and graphics start to come together, timely review by the client is critical to the project staying on-schedule. As graphic and written content starts to be added the internet advertising project really starts to take shape. Review and final approval of multiple webpages can take substantial time, especially if content is highly technical, specialized or legal review is required.
Milestone: Integration
While the level of effort throughout the integration process never really tapers off, different people within the agency and the client’s organization may start to engage. Once the internet advertising campaign is approved, the client provides access for the advertising agency to access required web hosting services . The agency proceeds to run a series of tests to help analyze how well the advertising campaign is performing online. These metrics include Google analytics to help analyze web traffic, conversion tracking to measure how many visitors to the site purchase a product or subscribe to a service. For the advertising agency, the integration milestone also involves integration of the overall online advertising scheme with existing customer databases and information.
