The Wise and Foolish Ad Builders

Perhaps you’re familiar with the biblical parable of two house builders. One built a house on a foundation of rock, and when faced with adverse weather, the house remained standing because it was built on a firm foundation. The other built a house on sand, and during the same adverse weather, the sand didn’t provide a good foundation and the house collapsed. This has implications for us in online advertising too, as we face digital storms here and there, and must rely on solid foundations so our accounts can weather them. 

Evergreen ads are our strong foundation. I typically recommend that my clients create a wide variety of evergreen ads, and then non-evergreen (or “flighted”) image ads as needed. This applies just as much to search ads as display ads.

What should an evergreen ad consist of? To answer this, find out what is always true about a client’s business. What makes it worth buying from? What was true years ago, is true today, and will be true years from now?

Let’s say the client is a music store looking to sell guitars online and in store. What is always true about this music store? Perhaps they have expertise from selling guitars for many years. Maybe you can try before you buy. Maybe they have a warranty or maintenance plan or guitar buyer’s package that comes with some extra strings and a tuner and a capo or whatever. If nothing comes to mind, ask the client: why should anyone buy from you? Look for reasons other than price. There will pretty much always be someone that can sell a given product or service cheaper than you can, so relying on rock-bottom prices probably isn’t going to work for most advertisers. 

Build a solid foundation out of those evergreen selling points, and sprinkle in flighted things as they come, if they’re worth it. But build your accounts on a foundation of rock, not sand.