Advertising Management Guide: Enhance Brand Impact Through Ads

Advertising management is an indispensable part of any modern business. In fact, 68% of marketers consider it extremely important for their overall marketing strategy. Business competition is high, and the race for customers is even higher, so you must find ways to stand out. With proper advertising, you can craft meaningful messages that will speak to your audience, popularize your brand, and warm up your prospecting efforts.

In fact, you probably can recall at least one ad that made you buy something or at least remember the brand. For B2C customers, that could be that funny Fiat commercial that worked solely on creativity and did its job perfectly. In B2B, however, besides creativity, you have to have precision. 

Your digital ad messaging should feel as personally crafted as possible, target the right people, and be delivered at the right time. Tracking consumer behavior should be the path to engaging your prospects during their buyer’s journey.

However, it’s not an easy process to handle, especially if you are new to ads management. Let’s discover its definition, types, objectives, and benefits for your business.

What Is Advertising Management?

Advertising management is the process to plan, oversee, and control various advertising activities meant to influence the target audiences’ buying decisions. Simply put, the role of advertising management is to develop and place the ads in the most relevant places that will bring the best results. 

The scope of ad management includes analyzing the current advertising strategy and target audience, evaluating its effectiveness, and updating it toward existing goals. It also involves setting the budget, crafting relevant messaging, hiring relevant specialists, and managing their work. 

Implementing strategic advertising management practices into your business plan is meant to introduce certain products or services to your relevant audience, develop a better image, level-up brand awareness, and boost overall sales. Some people try to handle these processes themselves while others hire professional digital agencies.

Types of Digital Advertising Management

While traditional advertising methods like print and broadcast media are still in use, digital advertising has surged in popularity, especially among B2B marketers. The U.S. digital ad market is projected to surpass $300 billion by 2025, highlighting the growing importance of online advertising.

Digital advertising management involves placing ads on online channels to promote your brand, product, or service. There is a big variety of digital formats you can use for your business, including emails, social media, blogs, search engines, and forums—and all of which can host your ads. 

Let’s look at the main types of digital advertising management to determine the best format for your business:

Social media advertising

Social media advertising leverages platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube to reach a broad audience. Its popularity stems from the vast user base and seamless integration into marketing strategies. Social media ads can be targeted, sponsored, or organic (influencers and word of mouth). Automation tools also allow for easy post boosting directly from their dashboards.

Search engine advertising

Search engine advertising includes SEO and PPC ads, which appear during web searches. SEO involves optimizing content with keywords to improve search engine rankings, while PPC allows businesses to pay for top placement in search results. Both strategies aim to increase visibility and drive traffic to your website.

Interactive advertising 

Interactive advertising includes video ads and online ads that require viewers to perform a certain action. Although interactive ads take more time to produce, they also show good response levels and appear among current lead generation trends. 

This type of advertising has unlimited creativity options and has an opportunity to engage the prospect emotionally. 

Email advertising

Despite past associations with spam, email advertising remains one of the most effective ways to reach your audience. The key is to target individuals who have interacted with your company or opted in on your website. It's cost-effective and ideal for promoting specific offers or introducing new services.

Programmatic display advertising

Programmatic ads deliver a promotional message across various communication channels. They can be presented as banners, landing pages, or pop-up ads and can appear anywhere on the Internet. 

Digital ads have a high-speed delivery and offer further segmentation of your lead lists. They can be altered, personalized, and changed as your campaign progresses, always striving for maximum effectiveness. But most importantly, they can combine all of the previously mentioned advertising types into one thorough ad campaign.

CIENCE offers an ad targeting solution that analyzes your ideal customer profile (ICP) and differentiates micro audiences from it to create a highly targeted ad campaign. Ads like those can appear to the prospects in your lead list prior to the first contact with a sales development representative (SDR), warming up the cold outreach and raising overall brand awareness. 

3 Main Advertising Management Objectives

The goal of any promotion should be to carry out conversations between the brand and the customer to increase sales and profits, but there’s a bit more to it. Before starting a campaign, determine your advertising management objectives: 

1. To introduce 

The first advertising objective is to inform your potential customers about your brand. Make them aware of the services you provide, introduce a new product or present an interesting offer, or talk about breaking into a new market. All of these will serve as a conversation starter around your brand and can lay the groundwork for the next objective. 

2. To persuade 

Another goal is to convince your potential buyers that your product or service is the best. This objective is meant to show your value over the competitors and persuade them to switch brands. Every ad should have a clear purpose and call to action (CTA) that needs to be performed, such as clicking a link or filling out a form. 

3. To remind

Some advertising campaigns may start from ground zero when the company (market or service) is new, but some aim to refresh your audience’s memory. It should be to remind them what you stand for, promote what makes you unique, and of course, why you're better than the competition.

Questions to Ask in Ad Management

To choose the right direction in the advertising management process, you have to ask some questions to determine your advertising path. Here are some top questions to consider: 

What role does advertising play in overall marketing? 

Purpose: Understand the impact of advertising on your overall marketing efforts. Key Considerations:

• Assess the contribution of advertising to leads, customers, email opens, clicks, and other metrics.
• Compare these metrics to the overall marketing performance to gauge the effectiveness of your advertising efforts.
• Decide whether to enhance or scale back your advertising based on this comparison.

Why do you need to advertise? 

Purpose: Clarify the primary goals of your advertising efforts.
Key Considerations:

• Identify whether your goal is to break into a new market, expand your reach, or promote a seasonal offer.
• Determine the specific objectives you want to achieve, such as increasing brand awareness, driving traffic, or boosting sales.
• Align your advertising strategy with these goals to ensure a focused approach.

How will you achieve set goals? 

Purpose: Develop a detailed plan to achieve your advertising objectives.
Key Considerations:

• Conduct competitive analysis to understand what works in your industry.
• Brainstorm ideas and consult with your team to develop creative and effective ad campaigns.
• Consider running small test campaigns to validate your strategies before full-scale implementation.

Who will be responsible for coordinating advertising efforts?

Purpose: Establish a clear structure for managing advertising activities.
Key considerations:

• Determine whether you will build a dedicated advertising team or leverage existing marketing resources.
• Identify key roles such as designers, content writers, marketing specialists, and managers.
• Ensure clear communication and collaboration among team members to streamline the advertising process.

When will you kick off certain elements of the advertising campaign? 

Purpose: Set a timeline for your advertising campaign to ensure timely execution and measurement.
Key Considerations:

• Define the preparation time required for creating ad elements like graphics, copy, and landing pages.
• Schedule the launch date of the campaign and establish milestones for different phases.
• Set expectations for when you should start seeing results and plan for ongoing monitoring and adjustments.

Common Challenges in Ad Management

Effective advertising management is essential for successful marketing campaigns, but it comes with several inherent challenges. Recognizing these challenges allows for better preparation and the development of strategies to effectively address them.

• Budget Constraints: Limited budgets can restrict the scope and reach of advertising campaigns.
• Ad Fatigue: Audiences can become tired of seeing the same ads repeatedly, leading to decreased engagement and performance.
• Measuring ROI: Tracking and accurately measuring the ROI for ad campaigns can be complex, especially with multiple channels involved.
• Targeting the Right Audience: Identifying and reaching the most relevant audience for your ads can be challenging, leading to wasted ad spend.

Balancing creative content with data-driven decisions is crucial. To address these challenges, it's important to focus on strategic planning, continuous monitoring, and maintaining a flexible approach. This ensures your advertising efforts remain effective and adaptable to changing trends and regulations.

Advertising Management Process

So what is the scope of your marketing advertising management? How do you manage ads? Let’s go through the main steps to create a strategic process: 

1. Review the marketing plan. 

Advertising objectives come out of the marketing objectives, so it makes sense to review the whole marketing plan before starting an advertising campaign. This ensures that any promotional activity that takes place will align with your company’s vision and values.

At this point, perform an audit of your marketing plan: 

• Research competitors and markets.
• Evaluate what has proven to be effective in the past.
• Assess budget restrictions.
• Analyze the target market and audience.

2. Create an advertising framework. 

Objectives of advertising management provide the framework for the entire advertising strategy. Specify the goals you need to achieve and how to evaluate them. For consistent performance, you can choose one of these top marketing models: AIDA, SMART, or DAGMAR.

To set realistic objectives, you should consider the needs for your service:

• Brand awareness: brand recognition and brand recall 
• Brand preference: whether you get preferred over your competitors
• Purchase intent: probability the consumer will buy your product
• Purchase facilitation: whether a client knows where and how to make a purchase.

3. Establish the budget. 

An advertising management budget is a crucial subset of a marketing budget, which in turn is part of the overall business budget. The landscape of digital advertising continues to grow significantly. In 2024, the global digital advertising market is valued at $667.6 billion, representing 68.9% of the total media ad expenditure.

The digital ad spend in 2024 marks a 10.9% increase from the $601.8 billion spent in 2023. This substantial rise highlights the shift towards digital platforms as businesses aim to reach a growing number of internet users worldwide.

In 2023, Meta (formerly Facebook) was projected to generate around $62.70 billion in ad revenue from the U.S. alone. This highlights the platform's dominant position in the digital advertising market and its continued relevance for marketer.

To outline a reasonable budget, your sales advertising management team should calculate how important advertising is to sales (percentage of how many converted leads came from ads), calculate the costs of media channels used, and add hiring costs, salaries, tech stack, etc.

To manage and allocate a reasonable advertising budget effectively, follow these steps:

• Calculate the Contribution to Sales: Assess the percentage of sales generated from advertising efforts. This can be determined by tracking the conversion rates from various ad campaigns.
• Cost Analysis: Break down the costs of different media channels used. This includes digital platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn, as well as any traditional media if applicable.
• Operational Costs: Include costs related to hiring specialists, such as digital marketers, graphic designers, and content creators. Additionally, account for salaries, software subscriptions, and any other tools necessary for campaign management.
• Budget Allocation: Based on the above factors, allocate your budget proportionally to the channels that yield the highest ROI. For instance, if Facebook ads are particularly effective, consider dedicating a larger portion of your budget to that platform.

4. Determine media channels. 

Once you set the objectives and budget, advertising management can plan out the next steps that need to be taken throughout the ad journey. This includes media channel strategy development, media tactics design, and effectiveness evaluation. Start by answering the following questions: 

• Where would the ad be placed? 
• How many times would a target audience member see the ad in a given period?
• How wide is the reach of the ad?
• What level of ad exposure is needed to reach the goals?

After that, your ads management team should choose the type of advertising to adopt, measure the effectiveness of the chosen method, and update or replace it if needed.

Importance of Advertising Management

According to Hubspot, at least 33% of marketers use advertising to boost brand awareness. But the importance of advertising management doesn’t stop there. Here are some other ways that advertising—and specifically digital ads—can be advantageous to your business:

1. Introduces your name to the public 

Advertising management helps bring and introduce new business solutions to the market. In addition to boosting brand awareness, it gives you a platform to show your advantages over the competitors, and it also opens up brand-new markets for your business. 

2. Keeps advertising under control

Without supervision, there’s a lot that can go wrong in any marketing activity. Having an advertising management process helps to guide your strategies in the right direction, check for updates and new approaches, and find the best (and most cost-effective) ways to reach the right audience with the right message. 

3. Enhances sales

Almost every business activity has the end goal of contributing to sales. Advertising may not result in many direct sales; however, it’s an important step in omnichannel outreach that warms up the leads, spreads the word about your services, and contributes to the overall success of sales.

4. Precise targeting  

You need to be able to target the right prospects who would be interested in your services, and thanks to SEO, website visitor tracking, and targeted ads, that’s what digital advertising allows you to do. 

5. Cost-effective 

Print, TV, or outdoor ads cost a lot, and not all companies can afford that. With reasonable prices in digital advertising, everyone gets to start on the approximately same level, save some money, and then let management do its job. 

6. Measurable results

Traditional advertising can be hard to measure due to being offline, while in digital, there are plenty of KPIs to check the results of the efforts put in: conversion rate, traffic, unique visitors, click-through rate, etc.

Manage Your Ads the Right Way 

Ads play a crucial role in every stage of the buyer's journey, from awareness to purchase. They help warm up leads, introduce your brand to the target audience, open new markets, build brand recognition, and ultimately boost sales. To maximize the effectiveness of your advertising efforts, investing in advertising management is essential.

Ad management is the strategic thinking behind advertising that is responsible for setting objectives to define the right marketing direction, pick the outreach channels, and take all of the necessary steps to reach your desired goals. 

Frequently Asked Questions