Increasing revenue is an obvious goal for nearly every business — and attracting new customers is the main method for achieving it. In a 2018 survey, digital marketing and brand professionals like yourself put both increased sales revenue and increased leads as key objectives for this year. At the same time, they listed lead generation as one of their biggest challenges.

There are many different ways that you can drive new leads to your brand and convert them into customers. One of the most effective ways to attract and win over new customers is through engaging and effective prospecting ads. With the right elements — an understanding of your audience and their mindset, a clear value proposition, and high-quality visuals — you can create ads that will win over new leads.

Understand Your Audience

Your strategy for any marketing activity needs to have the right foundation: a thorough understanding of your target customers. This is especially true for ads, where you have a limited space and copy to sell your product or service. In particular, you need to have laser-focused clarity on your audience’s pain points, questions and the things they care about the most.

That clarity is essential to creating effective ads that reach your customers where they are. At the same time, knowing additional information about your customers, including their demographics and interests, can help you better target your ads so that you know they are being seen by the right individuals.

Focus on the Buyer’s Journey

For ads that bring new customers and a higher ROI, you also need to understand the process that your buyers go through, from initial awareness of a need to the actual purchase itself. Potential customers may come across your advertisements and your brand at any stage in that buyer’s journey. Focusing on the steps your customers take from start to finish can help you ensure that customers see ads that match where they are on their pathway to a purchase.

Make the Benefit Clear

As mentioned earlier, an ad gives you limits the space and time you have to make an impact on potential buyers. This is true whether you’re advertising on the Google network or using more creative native ads on a different platform. To make the most of your ad budget, each ad campaign and ad creative should have a clear value proposition — and keep the ad streamlined with a powerful headline, simple messaging and a clear call to action (CTA).

Your ad should make it very clear to prospects exactly what your brand can do for them — and why yours is the best solution for their specific needs. The CTA should leave no question as to the viewer’s next steps in taking advantage of that solution.

Use High-Quality Visuals

There’s no question that text is a key element of ads that win prospects — but without quality visual elements, your ad might never capture that ideal customer’s attention. Just as you need to take the time to understand your audience and create ad copy that speaks to them specifically, you also need to take time to develop the right visual style and elements for your ads.

Design continues to be an important factor in whether or not consumers find a brand to be trustworthy, making ad design an aspect of your creatives that you can’t ignore or put together haphazardly. The photos, graphics and style of your ad should be carefully chosen to reflect the message that your ad is sending to leads.

Conclusion

With the right strategy and attention to detail, in both your ad text and graphics, it is possible to create ads that consistently win over new customers. Effective ads not only build your audience base, but also mean you can turn your ad spend into an even higher return as they generate more sales.