Brayan Iliev
How to read your results: what drops mean and when not to take action
When ad results drop, panic leads to chaotic changes and even worse data. In this art...
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A good online advertising strategy is essential if you want your ads to deliver real results. See what its main elements are and why it is key to success in digital marketing.
Online advertising without a strategy is like a train without tracks. In this article we look at what a good strategy includes and why it is an essential part of successful digital advertising.
A strategy gives you focus, order, planning and the ability to scale. It supports many different things overall, but mainly:
Budget planning is not just picking an amount that “sounds right”. It involves analysing margins, expected returns, the real capacity of the business and its stage of development. This is where you model what customer acquisition cost is acceptable and what your break-even ROAS is. Good budgeting also accounts for test campaigns, scaling and remarketing.
Planning marketing angles means choosing approaches and messages based on market and competitor research. It includes testing different communication directions and picking the ones that resonate most with the audience. Marketing angles help the business stand out from noisy competition.
Minimising risk means planning tests, segmentation and a fallback plan in advance. That way you avoid spending budget on channels, offers and audiences that do not work. Part of the strategy is to monitor performance closely and optimise in good time.
A clearly structured strategy lets every team (marketing, sales, production and logistics) work in sync. Everyone knows their role, deadlines and expectations. This reduces mistakes and speeds up execution.
Setting clear goals means breaking them down into concrete steps: what you are aiming for in terms of awareness, conversions and retention, which KPIs you will track, and over what period. This makes the strategy measurable and manageable.
Without this kind of structure, advertising often leads to chaos, unclear results and losses. That is why so many businesses conclude that “Facebook doesn’t work” or “Google Ads doesn’t deliver”, when what is actually missing is the right plan.
Before we get into the specific elements of a good strategy, it is worth stressing that each of these stages lays the foundation for sustainable growth and protects the business from haphazard decisions and unnecessary costs. Every point plays a key role in the overall effectiveness of the advertising.
This is the first and essential step. The analysis looks at who the other players are, what they offer, at what prices, how they position themselves and in what tone they communicate. This information helps you make informed decisions and find gaps in the market.
Pro tip: In our work we often use a “dump” email account to subscribe to the newsletters of the most direct competitors. This lets us follow their email campaigns in real time. Businesses often send new promotions or product drops to their subscribers first, which gives us the chance to react quickly and launch a better offer or more interesting messaging before their public announcement.
Here we define how the business will stand out through its messaging, visuals, product concept, communication and marketing angle.
For a client selling alpaca socks in the US, we decided to think differently, and simply. Instead of following the common practice of advertising with messages about cosiness and comfort at home, we focused on people who need tough, comfortable socks for the whole day. These were mainly construction workers and hikers. Our research showed that almost every competitor talked about comfort on the sofa, but nobody was talking to the people who spend their day on their feet. In the ads we showed real-life situations: work on a building site, long mountain hikes, rain and cold. We used simple messages such as “Durability all day long” and “Comfort in any weather”. This more human, practical approach brought the business new customers and higher sales, because people recognised themselves in the product.
This is not just about age and location. Here you look at the behaviour, motivations, pain points and needs that drive the purchase decision. Once the differentiation is in place, it is relatively easy to research the pain points of that specific audience. With the US sock client I mentioned in the previous point, we went through various Reddit and Quora threads, where we found specific pain points and the way customers express them. This helped us build the ads and the landing page around their language and problems, so that we were as relevant as possible. That makes the messages and the ads far more effective, because they address real pain points and problems.
We decide which platforms to use, in what order and with what content. This decision should not be random; it should rest on well-defined marketing angles, the product’s unique advantages and a clear picture of the target audience. In fact, once these elements are in place, choosing channels becomes much easier. All you need to find out is where your audience spends most of its time online: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google or elsewhere. It is important that this matches the stage of the business and its resources, and that the content fits the habits and expectations of people on that particular platform.
The funnel, from awareness and interest through conversions to retention, is the basis of sustainable advertising. Each stage has its own goals and formats. The ad structure is one of the most important elements of the strategy. It has to be built for the specific channel, and this is where the marketing team’s expertise comes in: knowing well how each channel works. On Facebook, for example, the structure should normally allow creative testing (how much depends on the budget) and make it easy to move the winning elements into a scaling campaign. It should allow for both vertical and horizontal scaling, to get the most out of the ads and audiences that perform well.
We plan which types of visuals and messages to test (UGC, VSL, infographics, static images and so on) to find the best-performing combinations. This step is key, because the creatives are what the audience sees first, and they are what does or does not spark its interest. That is why we use a range of formats and approaches, from more natural, raw visuals to professional banners. You need to test not only the design but also the messages, the copy style and even the colours and composition. The best combination for scaling is chosen by analysing the results. Planning the creative concept properly reduces the risk of unnecessary spend and increases the chance that the ads perform well from the early stages of the campaign.
This includes calculating margin, CPA, break-even ROAS and profit scenarios. It is one of the most important pieces of business logic, and it has to be calculated very carefully. For example, we ask the business for concrete prices and all-in margins, including delivery, product cost, packaging and so on. The aim is to assess the price and, if needed, change it so that there is a balance between competitiveness and margin. We aim for a margin of around 50-60% and an average selling price of at least €50, so that there is room for a larger advertising budget. These metrics are decisive: if one business can afford €5 to acquire a customer and another can afford €10, the second will comfortably win more auctions and turn the market in its favour.
For multi-product shops, our team decides which products to advertise based on clear business criteria:
There is no perfect product. We assess products against 15 criteria (the ones above are only a small part, but the most important) and so far we have never had a product that met more than 10. What matters most is a good margin and an average order value of around €50, so that at least economically we can be confident everything is in order.
This is where you define how success will be measured: ROAS, CPA, CTR, LTV. Without measurable goals there is no real optimisation. Here you set the main goals of the campaign and the metrics you will track. For online shops, for example, the main goals are often the number of sales and return on ad spend. For us as an agency, the key metrics include ROAS, CPA, CTR (especially when testing creatives) and Frequency. The exact KPIs are set according to the goals and the advertising channel, to ensure good tracking and a real basis for optimisation. This is a standard step in every strategy, because different platforms and goals call for different measures of success.
A strategy has to match the resources and stage of the business. More money does not automatically mean better results; what matters is how the processes are structured. A strategy is not a static document but a living process that is adapted and optimised every month. Having a strategy is the main sign of professionalism when you work with an agency or a freelancer. No ads go live without a strategy: that is the basic standard of a serious approach. The strategy should be driven by the business logic and follow it, and the other way round, the business should be guided by well-built marketing logic.
At Evol.bg we do not promise millions. We are a partner for clarity, effectiveness and growth, and we do everything we can to help a business grow when it has potential and a good product.
