Under Armour Design Tactics Reversed

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Overall Thoughts

This Under Armour ad was made for the I will what I want campaign. There are multiple ads depicting strong women. I chose to reverse engineer this particular women’s boxing ad. I also created an ad that could go in this campaign with the original ad, in this post I’m going to compare the two. We’re going to talk about four design elements that went into these ads:

Alignment

Everything in this original Under Armour ad is on straight lines. The woman’s legs are straight, the punching bag is straight (diagonally but still straight, there’s no curvatures), the text is straight, and even the buildings behind the woman are set up on straight lines. This helps to make the ad look nice, neat, and very organized. There are clear lines, and this makes the image overall really appealing.

Now here is my ad. In terms of alignment, I used a left align for my text, and lined it up with the top of the car. I used all straight lines, as the original campaign ad did, to draw the eye from text to person. While this image does not have as many clear lines, it still has the lines the text created, as well as the lines of the car and the woman’s leg.

Proximity

In this ad, the words are on top of the woman, who is making contact with the punching bag, and there are buildings all around. Normally when we talk about proximity there is more space between things. In this particular ad, there is very little or close proximity. The buildings behind the woman are all very close together. But, she is also the only one on the roof. The close buildings and the woman alone on the roof are almost a stark contrast in terms of proximity.

In terms of proximity for my own ad, everything was much closer. The picture of the woman was taken from a closer angle, and the real open proximity is to the right of the woman on the car. But, I kept the close proximity theme of the original ad when I put my text closer to the woman and the car.

Color

In this original ad the city around the woman is full of white, grey, and other neutral colors. But, her athletic clothes are bright colors and stand out very nicely. These color contrasts draw the eye in while also being very visually appealing.

For my ad, the colors are a little more vibrant. You can see the yellow car, and the yellow boxing gloves, as well as the colorful leggings worn by the woman. So, obviously my picture involved more color, but it still draws the eye to the main subject: the strong woman.

Typography

The original ad has very simplistic typography. The designers used a san serif font (a font without the little tags on the ends of the letters), and in all caps. The san serif font makes the text easy to read, and the all caps makes you read every letter. This was very clever on the designer’s part in my opinion. They use the colors to draw you in and then the capital letters to make things look neat and precise.

In my own ad, I kept the theme of a san serif font in all caps. I also used straight lines to guide the viewer’s eye across the text and to the woman. I also stacked my text more than having it in a couple of lines.

Concluding Thoughts

The original ad compared to the new ad I created myself are similar in many ways, yet also very different. Design aspects are so important when creating ads, because they make things interesting for the viewers. You need to draw in their attention and keep it, while also being creative and unique.

July 7, 2019 0

ROI Conversion Tracking & Optimizing Ad Performance

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Overall Thoughts

For this week’s post, there was a lot of information. And it may be a little lengthy, so hang in there! But, what I did learn this week is that there is so much thought, time, and effort that goes into tracking ads and their success. So let’s jump in!

ROI & Conversion Tracking

Your first question is probably what is ROI and conversion tracking? Well, ROI means Return On Investment. And conversion tracking is basically keeping track of all the actions that you want your customers to take when they click on your ad and go to your website. This will help you see how much of a profit your making from your ads compared to how much your spending on those ads.

ROI is one of the most important things for advertisers because its showing you the real effect that your ads have on your business. Knowing your ROI helps you to evaluate and decide whether the money your spending on your ads is leading to healthy profits for your business.

How ROI Works & Why it Matters

ROI is basically a ratio of your business’s net profit to costs. To calculate ROI you take the revenue result from your ads, subtract your overall costs, and then divide by overall costs. Or you can look at it like this: ROI = (revenue-cost of goods sold) / cost of goods sold.

Like I said earlier, this is one of the most important things to advertisers, it shows the true success of your business! By calculating this, you’re seeing how much money your actually making for how much your spending. ROI can also help you to see better ways to spend your budget and improve the success of your ad campaigns.

Conversion Tracking – Use it!

Conversion tracking is very, very helpful when looking in terms of ROI. Conversions are customer actions that are considered to be valuable in terms of ads and clicks on your website. This type of tracking is used mainly to show you what is happening after a customer interacts with an ad for your business.

Using conversion tracking helps you to really fine-tune your ads. It can help you see which keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns are doing best (and which aren’t doing so good) to help you understand where your spending needs to be targeted. To set up conversion tracking, you simply need a website and the ability to edit the site so you can add a conversion tag (HTML coding that enables you to track the conversions).

Looking at Ad Performance

Now that you’ve got ROI and conversion tracking going, you need to get your ads to perform well to boost those ratings and bring you a better profit. The best way to optimize ad performance is to focus on negative keywords. We’ve talked about this in past posts, but we’re going to go into more detail here.

Understanding Negative Keywords

Negative keywords allow you to exclude certain search terms from your campaigns in order to help you focus on the keywords that matter most to your customers and business. In order for these negative keywords to work, you need to pick search terms that are similar to the keywords you’ve already chosen, but that could potentially steer customers to search for a different product. Basically, you’re finding search terms that are related to your product, but are not exactly your product.

Types of Negative Keywords

There are three types: broad, exact, or phrase match. Each type is different in the way that negative keywords work best when you add synonyms, singular or plural versions, misspellings, and other close variations. Keep in mind: If you use exact keywords or phrases or words that are strongly related to the content ads won’t show. Let’s talk about each type.

Broad match negative keywords are the default of negative keywords. But you still have to be cautious, if you choose words where when a search is done and it contains all of your negative keywords (even if the words are in a different order), the ad won’t make an appearance in the search. So don’t be too broad, be reasonable.

Exact match negative keywords will cause your ad to be a no-show in a search if the search has the exact keywords in the same order. So again, be reasonable. Don’t be so specific that your ad can never be found.

Phrase match negative keywords will cause your ad not to show up if the search has the exact keywords in the same order. But, the search can include additional words. Most of the time though, the ad still won’t show up as long as all the keywords are included in the search.

Be cautious: too many negative keywords may make your ads reach fewer people.

Don’t Be Afraid to Use All Types

You can also use all three types to make more efficient ads. For example, you could use broad match to target your ad towards a bigger audience, but then also use exact match to target specific groups of customers. The best way to know what works for you is to experiment.

Expanding Keywords

The last topic we’re covering today is expanding keywords. You want to expand the reach of your keywords to improve your ad rank. The rank of your ads makes them more competitive and therefore more popular- leading you to have more success with the popularity of your ad. To boost this there are three ways to start: increase your bids, increase your ad quality, and enable/ improve ad extensions.

Of the three ways to boost ad performance, I strongly suggest looking into improve ad quality. Best performing ads are the ones found most relevant. Think about how you search for things on the internet and apply that to your ads. This way, if you know what you’re customers are looking for, you can target them and focus on making your ads, campaigns, and keywords relevant to them.

Concluding Thoughts

When looking at the success of your ads, be patient and don’t give up. Take the time to experiment and research what your customers want to see and what they think is relevant. Also regularly review your ROI, conversions, and ad optimizations! This way you can keep up with your customers and keep your business afloat. Good luck with your ads!

June 28, 2019 0

Ads & Ad Groups

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Overall Thoughts

This topic came as a surprise to me this week. I always thought creating ads was just a way to show your product or business. But, there is much more thought that goes into it! Creating and editing successful text ads is a much deeper thought process than I originally imagined. Here’s some things to look out for.

What makes a successful ad?

When writing an ad, there are many things to consider. Such as highlighting uniqueness, including prices and promotions, empowering customers to take action, and more that we will touch on later in this post. A successful ad grabs the attention of possible customers or clients, and pulls them in. The ad needs to be simple and easy to understand. But, also not so simple that you can’t tell what the product is. An ad also has eye drawing colors and easy to read font type. Making sure you have these things in your ad is so important! Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask your self: “what would appeal to me as a customer of this business?” Now, let’s talk about making a good ad.

Highlighting Uniqueness

Make sure that your ad shows that your business is unique. What makes it different from all of the others like it out there? Do you have free shipping? Do you have a shocking variety? Products or other offers that make you more competitive? Put them on the ad! Ads are all about drawing people in.

Prices, Promotions, & Exclusives

If you are planning on having good prices, promotions, and exclusives, you can show it in your ad. Customers often look at ads and weigh the decision in their mind whether they need your product or not. But they do need it (in your eyes at least)! So help make the decision for them. Give them what they need to make the decision to visit your site.

Empower Action

Give your customers the power to take action. Give them every opportunity to feel that they have all the facts. Tell them what they can buy. Tell them how they can contact you. Use different calls to action. What do I mean by this? Use words and buttons that say things such as “purchase”, “call today”, “order”, “browse”, “sign up”, or “get a quote”. These words tend to draw attention and draw in customers. Give the customers the power. You’ll be grateful you did!

Keywords

Last week’s post explained keywords. Well, in this weeks post, we are including them in our ads. And it is smart if you do! Including at least one of your keywords shows the relevance of the ad to your product, a.k.a. what people want. This can ad to the simplicity factor of your ads – it’s straight and to the point.

Matching Ads to Landing Pages

Your landing page is the page that you’re linking to the ad. It’s the first thing people are going to see when they click on the ad. Make sure that they match. People see the ad, and they might be confused or less interested when they see that the landing page doesn’t quite match the ad or the theme it gave off. If you put promotions or products on the ad, make sure you’re also showing those promotions or products on the landing page. People might leave your site if they aren’t seeing what they expected to see.

Appealing to Mobile Customers

In today’s day and age, everyone and there dog have a smart phone, tablet, or other mobile devices. So, it’s important that you appeal to them. Personally, I see more ads on my smartphone than I do on my computer, I even click on more ads on my smart phone than on my computer. Again, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think about what they would be seeing your ad on. In addition to this, putting a phone number on your ad gives customers the power to call you. Mobile ads are one of the best ways to get your business the recognition it needs.

Wrapping Up

Now that we have the basics of a good ad, it’s time to experiment. Create a few ads, three or four, and use different messages. These ads all together are an ad group. Keep track of which ads in the group are the most successful and use those. Make sure you are also paying attention to common ad mistakes. Make sure everything is clear, your URLs are working, there’s no awkward spacing or extra capitalization.

You do not need to use each and every one of these basics. Don’t clutter your ad. Remember, simplicity is key- get the message across. But, not too simple. Find a good balance. Now go create create your ads!

June 15, 2019 0