When is the best time to run an ad?

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Advertising. All businesses need to do it. Finding ways to make your marketing dollar go as far as possible depends on knowing how to make the most of the money you spend and the best place to spend it. There’s a secret to getting the timing just right on an ad. Let’s look at three examples: Facebook ads, newspaper ads and Google AdWords ads…and why seasons matter.

Seasonality

The most important thing to remember with any advertising is to understand seasonality – the actual seasons, key days like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day and trends in business – January vs June or Saturday vs Tuesday. All these seasonal factors impact the best time to advertise.

Knowing when your season starts is important for timing your marketing. Google Trends is a great free tool to watch trends in search terms. Search the common terms in your industry; do they correlate to your busiest seasons. Don’t start marketing after the frequency increases; it is too late then.

Platforms to advertise on

Facebook Ads
It’s important to remember there are two types of adverts on Facebook. The first is a paid advert. The second is ‘organic’ reach, which is content posted on your page or group for people to share, like and promote for you. However, because you have not paid for this, you have no control over who sees it, when they see it and what they do with it. For ‘organic’ posts, Facebook provides data on demographics and when people are engaging with you; you can use this data so you know the best times to post for engagement.

The most effective use of Facebook for controlling who your message gets in front of is to pay for an ad. Paid ads are seen by everyone in your target market. Run these ads when your audience is online – if they’re teenagers, for example, during school hours is probably not the best time or busy executives, work days are out. Experiment a little to work out when your paid ads will be most effective.

Newspaper Ads
Newspaper ads tend to be released for branding, sales or notification purposes. Each of which will require a little tailoring on the release schedule to make them work best. Also, notifications are usually, at least a little, urgent and you’ll be constrained to a short window of time to get them out and remain relevant.

Newspapers often have themed supplements or editorial calendars. Readers tune in for the themes, so make sure you are positioned to cater to them.

Google AdWords
Google AdWords, on the other hand, is a little different. Facebook offers you some data but a lot of it is not very precise because of the way Facebook marketing works. Google can offer you razor sharp feedback on ads to enable you to hone the best times very quickly.

You can set Google ads to run for the specific hour in a specific day, they will then provide feedback in their reporting metrics, as to how those ads are performing. Used properly, this feedback makes Google a goldmine because not only can you determine which slots are peak slots, you can also easily work out the ROI on slots that aren’t in such high demand.

You can determine what the best times for your business are with a little experimentation or by working with people who live and breathe marketing and advertising.

Alexei Kouleshov, Managing Director, Your Easy Web Solutions