A campaign problem can start outside the account
Across several years of paid advertising work, I have managed millions of pounds in spend, both directly in accounts and through agencies. That work has included turning loss-making campaigns into ones that exceeded company targets.
The first question was what the business needed the advertising to achieve. Understanding how it operated gave me a basis for judging the campaigns and deciding where the budget should go. It also kept individual account recommendations connected to the wider commercial priorities.
Following the journey through to the website
My work covered the campaigns, creative, offers and website together. Each could affect the result: an advert might need a clearer message, an offer might be difficult to understand, or the page might make buying harder than it needed to be.
Looking across that journey helped me decide where to focus the work. A change inside an advertising account could only go so far if people still struggled with what they found after clicking. Equally, a better page needed an advert that gave the right people a reason to visit.
That meant working on what customers saw as well as how the campaigns ran. It brought the advertising and the website into the same conversation, with the business objective providing a way to judge both.
Keeping agency work connected to the business
Where agencies were involved, I directed their work and considered their recommendations alongside what was happening elsewhere in the business. My experience working directly in accounts helped me discuss the detail and make changes myself where needed.
Three connected decisions
What does the business need?
Use the commercial objective to judge performance and where the budget goes.
Where is the problem?
Consider the campaign, creative, offer and website as parts of the same journey.
What needs to change?
Connect work inside the account with the experience customers have after clicking.
What changed
The results across this work include campaigns moving from losses to exceeding company targets. The spend managed and the turnaround experience span a body of work across Google and Meta advertising.
The lesson I take into the next account is to keep following the problem. Campaign settings, creative, offers and the website all deserve attention when the business is paying for a customer to make that journey.