One of the biggest challenges in advertising is the pressure to get results. This pressure makes it tempting to jump right into ads managers without strategically thinking through your ad approach and ad journey from start to finish. But that’s the worst way to do paid media. Having an effective ad campaign is all about crafting the ad journey from audience persona to user experience. 

Audience

Whom do you want to reach? This is the most important question in any strategy. You have to know whom you’re speaking to in order to have creative that resonates and moves your audience to action.

First, create an audience persona. A ‘persona’ forces you to think like a storyteller. Your audience is your character. You define jobs, habits, preferences, lifestyle, etc. This helps you paint a better picture. We all speak a little differently depending on whom we speak to. Political leanings, career, parent or not, income level, aspirations, and roadblocks may not seem like necessary information, but knowing these things reveals much about the content YOU will create for your audience. This especially applies to Catholics because there is a spectrum of Catholics from socially active devout Mass attendees to Catholic school-educated, now fallen away.

Algorithms focus on getting your desired results for as few dollars as possible. But the cheapest result isn’t necessarily the one that is valuable to you. If you want college students to see your ad, click to your website, and then register for a conference, showing the ad to everyone isn’t going to help. Why? Because the algorithm might find that grandmothers are the cheapest result and so spend every penny on them, leaving you with wasted ad dollars.

Ad Content

You’ve heard that content is king. We say the audience is king, content is queen. They go hand-in-hand. There are thousands of advertisements per day competing for your audience’s attention. This is why understanding your audience is key—you have to know how to get their attention! Content is indispensable to an effective ad campaign!

• Sometimes simple is better. Don’t be afraid to be very straightforward, not overflowing with marketing buzzwords and flowery, meaningless language. 
• You don’t have to put every detail into every ad. Try different messages with different visuals. 
• Play with formatting. If your optimization allows it, can your content be a video? Can it be a carousel? What has historically done well organically? Find things that have worked before or that are working for competitors/similar organizations, and test. 
• Don’t be afraid to break your brand. Because ads don’t “live” anywhere, you are freer with what kind of visuals you use. Lean into trends when it makes sense, or try new art styles that you normally wouldn’t. Remember, the point is to grab attention and entice action. Take the leap!

Establish KPIs (key performance indicators) before you start running ads. This will help you understand what success and realistic expectations look like. Ads that are performing well will show you what your audience likes and feels drawn to. Make more of that! If your approach isn’t working, and you start feeling stuck, shake it up! Go back to the drawing board. Cut and retain pieces, try varying art styles, and even entirely new content types. If you’ve only ever tried graphics, make some video content or motion graphics. Over time, you should start to get a feel for what your audience likes and doesn’t like by listening to their feedback and analyzing the data.

Destination

Your ad destination has to be the obvious next step based on what call to action was in your ad. Think of your ad journey like a movie or a story. Your audience is experiencing something that unfolds—it has to have a beginning, middle, and end, and each piece builds on the previous. The landing page is the natural next step after the ad. It expands the experience into a larger format but also clearly points to the next step.

Here are the essentials for your landing page:

Compelling Headline: A compelling headline grabs attention and communicates the value proposition immediately.

Clear Call to Action (CTA): This tells visitors exactly what you want them to do next. We recommend color-coding your CTAs. Make all your Donate buttons the same color; the consistency helps with clarity.

Engaging Visuals: Use high-quality images or videos that resonate with your audience and complement your message. Avoid stock images whenever possible! Use your influencers, like priests, bishops, or other key faces. Catholics love to see the impact of their involvement, so spotlight how this action helps or supports others.

Concise Copy: Communicate the benefits without overexplaining. Remember how much time your audience has. It needs to be EASY for them to take the next step. Don’t make reading a barrier.

Social Proof: Testimonials, reviews, or trust badges endorse you to the audience—they add credibility and reassure visitors that they’re making the right choice.

Experience

It is easy to spend a lot of time on how much money is in the budget and what ads to make and what channels to run on. Let’s talk about the often forgotten piece of advertising—user experience.

We’re not saying people are lazy or suspicious all the time. But, at the end of the day, you are asking your audience to DO something. Think about the way you approach this in your day-to-day life. If you ask a friend for a favor, you try to make it as simple, easy, and non-disruptive as possible. An effective ad campaign earns desired audience action. Elite advertising helps the audience take an action because THEY want to. By utilizing effective targeting and tailoring your ad content and destination to your audience, you’re already on your way to helping your audience take an action that is right for them. Now, you need to make sure that the experience is easy.

One of the most important facets of the user experience is ease of use. You need to remove as many barriers as possible between your audience and your intended action AND make sure the action itself is easy to complete. Here’s a real-world example we’ve seen time and time again that puts a barrier between an audience who wants to take action and actually completing the journey: You’re a diocese and you are planning a campaign for donations. Your donation form is 46 questions long because of the reasons you care about. But a 46-question form is NOT an easy giving experience for your user. Think about it from this perspective: What is the least amount of required information you need?

Chances are, you probably don’t NEED all 46 data points. What can you condense or cut? What can you mark as optional? Who doesn’t love simpler? If you can take a donation with as little as a name, email, address, and payment, then why would you add to the audience’s plate unnecessarily? This can dramatically increase the risk of losing the donation altogether. The same concept applies to other CTAs. Want your audience to watch a video? Prioritize it on your landing page, make sure it is the focal point. Don’t smush it to one side of a block of text. Give it breathing room and add a darker background behind it to help the video stand out. These visual cues tell the audience in a glance what you want from them.

When you advertise, you’re sending your audience on a journey. Every step of the way should be tailored to who they are and what they are looking for. You should be your audience’s tour guide, the tastemaker: you make life easier by knowing the way and showing them the best path. By being intentional and strategic with targeting, ad content, landing pages, and CTAs, your budget will go further.