Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Time is one of the most valuable resources we have — that’s why efficiency is something so many people strive for. The good news is that there are a plethora of marketing tools available today with the power to help you boost productivity and streamline monotonous processes or tasks — ad management tools are among the many options. 
In this blog post, we’ll talk about what ad management is, outline high-quality ad management software, and explain why they’re beneficial for all businesses.

What is advertising management?
Advertising management is overseeing different marketing activities and responsible individuals to ensure that campaigns are running effectively and target marketings are being reached. 
Depending on your business needs, advertising management can focus on various metrics that contribute to campaign success, like ROI or conversions or media placements that make sense for where your target audiences are. 
As there is often a lot to keep track of, many teams choose to use advertising management tools, which we’ll cover below.
Advertising Management Software
What are ad management tools?
Ad (advertising) management software and tools have the power to streamline and automate different aspects of advertising, including ad and campaign planning, collaboration, execution, sharing, monitoring, and analysis.
Why use ad management tools?
Ad management tools have many benefits. Here are some examples:

Save advertisers and marketers valuable time.
Improve productivity and efficiency.
Make collaboration simple.
Run cross-channel campaigns with ease.
Optimize your campaign structure.
Create insightful and customized reports with powerful analytics and reporting tools.
Visualize your data in a way that makes sense for your business and goals.
Increase the chances of successful ads and campaigns among your target audience.

Now, let’s review seven powerful ad management tools, meant for different types of ads, goals, and teams.
10 Best Ad Management Tools
1. HubSpot Ad Management Software

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HubSpot’s Ad Management & Tracking software helps you with your inbound marketing strategy and campaigns. You can run all of your campaigns out of this tool from start to finish — meaning, the HubSpot supports ad creation, management, and reporting across different networks.
Other unique and notable features you get from HubSpot’s Ad Tracking Software are:

Automate ad targeting using Lists that will sync your leads and audience for targeting opportunities.
Manage ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google.
Report on ROI and leads from the platforms you share your ads on (e.g., LinkedIn, Google).
Understand audience behavior by identifying which contacts took action and engaged with your ads.
Align ads with your other marketing efforts — this is simple because HubSpot Ads live with Marketing Hub.
Use data from your HubSpot CRM to inform your campaigns and help you determine which ads are most likely to convert contacts into paying customers.

Price of HubSpot Ad Tracking Software
Free, or you can start with/ upgrade to a paid plan depending on your needs and goals.
2. AdRoll

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AdRoll is a platform for ecommerce businesses that focuses on ads, email marketing, AI-based product recommendations, and cross-channel measurement. The platform acts as a home base for all of your business’s marketing and advertising activity. Here are some of AdRoll’s other notable capabilities:

Personalize dynamic ads using AI-powered product recommendations to target your audience members.
Share targeted videos and display ads to foster emotional connections with your audience.
Create relevant product offers, dynamic ads, emails, and other forms of outreach using data you’ve collected about your customers along with AdRoll’s 1.2 billion shopper profiles.
Use advanced measurement and attribution to identify growth opportunities and determine customer lifetime value (CLV).
Target your audience with paid digital media and account-based ad campaigns by integrating AdRoll with your CRM.

Price of AdRoll
Plans range from $0-$19 depending on your needs.
3. RollWorks

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RollWorks is an account-based platform meant to help you identify target accounts, engage them via ads and various channels, and measure your impact and success in doing so. The tool can identify target accounts, prioritize target accounts, automate various sales tasks, and account-based advertising. Here are some more things you can do with RollWorks:

Reach and engage highly-qualified accounts with ads, lead-gen tactics, and targeted account-based marketing (ABM) programs.
Use account-based ads to identify your target audience and encourage those people to visit your website.
Create retargeting ads to bring leads back to your site.
Integrate RollWorks with your HubSpot CRM to reach contacts that matter most to your business and view RollWorks data within the CRM.
Use dynamic messages to personalize your ads and make them relevant.
Automate your sales emails and follow-ups to save time and increase chances of engagement.
Easily track the success of your campaigns, account-based programs, sales automation sequences.

Price of RollWorks
The Starter plan costs $975 per month, and you can upgrade from there.
4. Influ2

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Influ2 is a person-based ad platform meant specifically for B2B. With the tool, show your ads to specific people and then measure the success of the ads among those targeted. Here are some other things you can do with Influ2: 

Select individuals to see your ads so they’re highly-relevant and targeted.
Improve brand awareness and recognition by only displaying curated ads and information to hand-selected audience members.

Connect Influ2 with your HubSpot CRM to sync contacts and targeting efforts with Sales and Marketing.
Use the Name-by-Name Tracker feature to see the names, emails, titles, companies, LinkedIn profiles of the people who interact with your ads.
Determine the best time to reach out to a prospect by tracking their engagement via views and clicks.
Keep your current customers engaged with person-based ads by offering relevant and informative content when they need it.

Price of Influ2
Contact Influ2 for demo and quote.
5. Adstream

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Adstream is an all-in-one digital asset management and ad delivery solution for broadcasters, publishers, and online services. It’s a Connectivity Suite, meaning it integrates and connects all aspects of your marketing including digital asset management and delivery, traffic management, media automation, and analytics. Here are some more notable capabilities:

Use a single workflow across marketing teams for total transparency and easy collaboration while organizing, creating, and sharing digital content.
Distribute your digital content among Adstream’s 79,000 global media destinations that the platform can connect you to.
Auto-adjust your content so it suits the different areas it’s being shared in around the world.
Add your incoming ads to the Traffic Management Inbox — here, you can easily review those ads as well as make edits, approve, and send them to another individual or team (e.g. Production).
Automate different workflows, or aspects of your workflows, to increase efficiency such as processes related to clearance or usage rights.
Measure the success of your digital campaigns and processes behind them with analytics, real-time reports, and tracking.

Price of Adstream
Contact Adstream for a quote.
6. 6Sense

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6Sense is an account-engagement platform with account-based advertising capabilities. The platform uses AI, big data, and machine learning to help you understand and identify your target audience’s buying behavior, prioritize sales and marketing accounts, and create and share personalized and engaging campaigns/ content. Let’s look at some more features:

Engage your target audience members at scale with highly relevant, unique, cross-channel messages.
Use account data to create targeted display ads that help you reach key players at target accounts.
Align Sales and Marketing as a single revenue team on the platform to accurately measure your account-based success.
Segment data about your target accounts for insight into the success of your campaigns among those specific accounts.
Use AI to help you predict prospect and account behavior throughout the buyer’s journey so you know when to target them with your ads, campaigns, and personalized messaging.
Refer to the platform’s Intent Data to discover which accounts are in the market for a product or service like yours with buying signals on first and third-party websites.

Price of 6Sense
Contact 6Sense for pricing information.
7. Celtra

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Celtra is a cloud-based software that automates creative production. With the platform, all aspects of collaboration will be streamlined and more efficient thanks to its cloud-based nature — team members can design, approve, and share digital assets among markets, campaigns, and more. Here are some more features to be aware of:

Use the Ad Builder’s templates to design unique and branded ads without any code — these ads can include ecommerce features as well as video and animation.
Get real-time reports that include over 100 metrics and dimensions to better understand the success of your creative work, campaigns, and ads.
Build user-friendly ad products to help you engage prospects.
Customize your ad products to suit your business with features like shoppable video, product galleries, and text and graphic overlays.
Gain access to Celtra’s support team and hundreds of on-demand videos and tutorials to help you achieve your goals on the platform.

Price of Celtra
Contact Celtra for pricing information.
8. Smartly.io

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Smartly.io is an ad management software for social media advertising. Its automated tool will help you build effective advertisements and experiences for your audiences on the social channels that matter most to your business. Algorithms also help you optimize your creative assets based on audience data, and you can bulk-update your ads in real-time. Some additional features to know:

Algorithms browse through your product catalog and data sources to create custom creative templates with copy variations based on target audience data. 
Custom KPIs and attribution windows for tracking performance and obtaining actionable insights that help you make effective decisions backed by data. 
Modular creative testing to ensure that you use the right kinds of ads in the right channels.

Price of Smartly.io
Smartly.io offers a self-service plan or a fully-managed plan; both charge a percentage fee of media spend. Contact Smartly.io for specific information. 
9. Marin Software

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Marin Software is an all-in-one platform for advertisers to manage search, social, and ecommerce ad spend. Its automated tools help you identify growth opportunities for search ads across major search engines, align your social channels to drive growth, and integrate your product feeds to optimize shopping campaigns. Let’s look at some more features:

Measure, analyze, and optimize all ad spend with first and third-party data to help you maximize ROI with informed targeting. 
Automated process for position-based bidding in search engines. 
Multi-channel advertising insights in one unified dashboard. 
The option to use managed services where in-house experts partner with you to drive results. 

Price of Marin Software
Contact Marin Software for pricing.
10. StackAdapt

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StackAdapt is a self-service advertising platform that digs deep into your business data to get unique insights that help you develop and deliver high-impact campaigns to your target audiences. It’s best for creative ad management, as its high-quality creative studio helps you match the most effective creative assets with campaign KPIs on a platform-by-platform basis. Here are some more things you can do with StackAdapt:

Multi-channel targeting for native, display, video, and audio ads
Access to a large ecosystem of media partners and publishers to advertise on.
Preview all ads on desktop or mobile, across 500+ publishers, and 23 different verticals to optimize them before sharing with your audiences. 
Machine learning and AI automate performance decisions, so your campaigns are most effective. 
Customizable reporting stack to help you obtain the most critical metrics. 

Price of StackAdapt
Contact StackAdapt for pricing.
Grow Better With Ad Management Tools
Your marketing team is bound to grow better with an effective ad management tool — don’t be afraid to experiment with various options to find the one that meets your needs and goals.

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Instagram marketing can be a hit or miss. Especially as you start implementing your social media strategy, it might take a while for your posts to start performing well.
When it does, your first instinct is to figure out what worked well and replicate it in future posts – a great move. What you can also do is boost your post to double down on its performance with a broader audience.

Find out how Instagram promotions work, how to set one up, and best practices to keep in mind when running one.
How are Instagram promotions different from ads?
Promotions give a second life to posts that have already been viewed and likely performed well. Ads, on the other hand, feature new content and are used as part of a campaign.
With a promotion, the goal is to reach a broader audience for more brand awareness and engagement. Or perhaps you want higher conversions on a particular post.
With an ad, however, you’re likely targeting a specific audience with a particular message in mind.
Whether it’s an ad or a promotion, it will show up the same way on Instagram with the “sponsored” label under the account name.
Instagram Promotion Goals
There are three main goals you can have when running an Instagram promotion:

More profile visits
More direct messages
More website visits

The goal you choose will determine where users are led after clicking on the CTA. While the first two goals will keep users on the social platform, the third will lead users to your landing page (LP).
Knowing your goal ahead of time is key to preparing your assets and having a plan for the influx in traffic, whether it’s on your profile, your DMs, or LP.
The first thing to know about running an Instagram ad is that you must have a business account. However, you may not have to link your Instagram account to a Facebook account to run the ad, a previous requirement up until June 2020, if this will be your first promotion.
1. Access the post you want to promote and click on the “Promote” button.

For Stories or Highlights, access your archive, select the post and select ‘Boost.’
2. Select a goal.

If you select “More Website Visits,” you’ll have to choose a destination for your users as well as your action button, i.e. your CTA. Here are the six button options:

Learn More
Shop Now
Watch More
Contact Us
Book Now
Sign Up

3. Define your audience.

When you choose “Automatic,” Instagram will simply target users who match your current followers’ interests and demographics, specifically those who have engaged with your content before. With the “Create Your Own” option, you can filter your audience by location, interest, age, and gender.
4. Set up a daily budget and a promotion duration.

Your daily budget range from $1 to $1,000 and the promotion can last anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days. Instagram recommends starting with a least $5 to reach a good pool of users.
5. Review your promotion and click “Create promotion.”

One thing to note is that Instagram will run your promotion on feeds, Stories, and the Explore tab – regardless of where it was originally published. Based on initial data, it will determine to run it where it performs best.
Once you submit your ad, it will go through an approval process, which usually takes 24 hours.
Best Practices for Building a Good Instagram Promotion
1. Promote top-performing content.
While you may be tempted to promote posts that need a little love, resist the urge. You may end up wasting money on a post that doesn’t have great potential.
If your brand is considering boost a one-off post, focus instead on posts with already high engagement.
Why? Well, these posts have already performed well with your followers. This is a good indication that they may perform well with the audience you haven’t yet reached.
2. Make sure your landing page is mobile-friendly.
Instagram is a mobile-first application.
As such, if you’re taking users to a website, make sure it offers a good user experience for mobile users. If not, you’ll end up with a high bounce rate and a low return on ad spend (ROAS).
A few things to keep in mind when designing for mobile:

Have a single-column layout – This makes the page much easier to scan and navigate.

Avoid too many images and videos – They may up too much space and crowd the site. And they can cause slower loading speeds.

Keep your copy short – What seems like perfectly spaced paragraphs on a desktop can easily become overwhelming on mobile.

3. Know your goal is ahead of time.
It’s important that you prepare your Instagram profile and/or landing page ahead of your promotion.
You want to make sure you’re ready to convert those users once they’ve clicked on your ad. Otherwise, what’s the point?
If your goal was to get more profile visits, be sure to have a visually appealing grid, a descriptive bio, and updated contact information.
If you’re hoping for more messages, consider adding a question in your ad to encourage conversation.
The earlier you start preparing, the more ideas you can develop to attract and convert your target audience.

 

 

Everybody agrees that the D2C strategy sky-rockets in the retail industry, and is, potentially, the next big thing for the manufacturers. It is seldom mentioned that it’s actually great for various eCommerce entities. Choosing the right model is key.

 

What D2C business is

 

For example, Andy Dune, founder of Bonobo, observed that Zappos’s growth had little to do with the product itself, but much to their excellent service. In response, Bonobo developed a culture of ultra-responsive customer support and saw their direct traffic rate increase by 53.3 percent. It was all about a great customer experience.  

 

Direct-To-Consumer is an e-Commerce strategy that allows companies, like manufacturers or CPG brands, to bypass the traditional chain of supply – wholesaler, distributor, retailer – and go straight to the consumer. No middlemen. Cost efficiency is the most obvious reason to go D2C. But there are more.

 

Reasons to move to D2C

 

According to the Direct-to-consumer Purchase Intent Index, 69% of Americans who are familiar with D2C brands made at least one purchase from such a brand last year.

 

Besides delivering what consumers want, there are other advantages:

 

Reducing dependencies

 

You don’t have to rely on distributors or retail partners. The less you are dependent on other businesses, the better – this harsh lesson, taught by the 2020 pandemic, sank really deep.

 

Know your customer data

 

Selling via a third party does not give you access to the customer data. You don’t see customers’ reactions to certain products, so you don’t have the basic information on how to improve customer experience. 

 

D2C allows you to be at least one step closer to your customers. SALESmanago will help you not only gather a tremendous amount of data about your customers. It will also enable you to use this data effectively to your advantage.

 

Control your brand

 

The way the customers think about you is partially shaped by the customer experience provided by the third party. It may be good or bad, but you don’t have direct control over it. 

 

With D2C you gain back this control because you communicate directly with your customers.

 

 Expand your territory

 

Distributors and retail partners have their reach and you cannot do much about this. No matter how excellent your product or service is, your partner’s networks and centers have their limits. 

 

D2C enables you to transcend these constraints and reach even for the globe.

 

Reduce costs

 

One might argue, that the current post-2020 reality, with record unemployment rates, forces the companies to tighten their budgets, reduce the costs to meet the requirements etc. The truth however is, that the cost-efficient solutions always replaced traditional ways of achieving the same result. 

 

D2C done right will enable you to strengthen the bonds with the customer while reducing the cost of the process via automation, self-service, and D2C shipping.

 

5 strategies within D2C model (and their pros and cons):

 

Not everyone is a manufacturer. Choosing the right strategy for your company involves careful evaluation of the business to ensure the goals, resources, and investments align with its values. Furthermore, you also have to have technological capabilities to support moving to D2C. 

 

The most common D2C strategies present on today’s market are:

 

Touch point commerce

 

This D2C strategy enables you to embed commerce in non-commerce digital touchpoints, like social media, games, and IoT. Involves the consumers stronger, enables to gather feedback, and braces the company to employ new methods of connecting with the customer in the future.

 

It gives great:

 

Insights. Embedding commerce in other kinds of activities will provide you with a unique view of customers’ behavior, customs, preferences. 

Customer Experience. Additional activity during the shopping process turns it into something special and, by definition, fun. 

Convenience. Taking part in an activity that is exciting and natural creates no burden for the users in the process.

Flexibility. Many possible formats and a variety of products and services possible to sell in such a way give the brand great business flexibility.

Affinity. Going that extra mile for the consumers and providing them with something less mundane than ordinary shopping bonds them with the brand stronger.

 

Weak as a source of:

 

New offerings. It will not make way for the new offerings to the market any easier.  

Product development. Additional action and fun help to sell the product, but it is not designed for product development, however great insight into customer preferences will surely be of help.

Digital Revenue. Another side of gamification is slowing down the purchase process. A little smaller group of dedicated customers will eventually generate a decent amount of revenue.

 

Any e-commerce brand will be able to employ this strategy.

 

Succes example: Mymuesli 

 

 Personalized D2C

 

Establishing one-to-one relationships with the customer via personalized programs, involving backend technology and e-commerce capability. Through personalized contact via forms or quizzes, detailed information about customers’ needs is gathered. Then the product is carefully selected from the offer to perfectly suit these needs. Increases engagement through customized experience and provides insights. 

 

It gives great:

 

Insights. A one-to-one relationship with the consumers will provide you with perfect insight into their needs and customs.

Product Development. This strategy is designed for those who plan to develop their product as the bond between the customer and the brand tightens and information is gathered.  

Affinity. Delivering a tailored product along with knowledge sharing, guidelines, etc. will create an exceptional level of brand affinity, leaving the consumer almost with no alternatives after a while.

Convenience. In an extremely consumer-oriented strategy, they will feel that the brand takes many decisions out of their hands, answers all the questions, and provides them with all the necessary expertise. 

New offerings. New offerings emerge naturally as the brand gets to know the clients better.  

Customer Experience. This strategy is centered on providing the best customer experience possible.

 

Weak as a source of:

 

Digital Revenue. Loyal customers will pay gladly for tailored products and expertise, but the customer service process is both time and effort-consuming. 

 

Manufacturers have the most tools for this strategy.

 

Succes example:Just Right Pet Food

 

Subscription

 

This strategy provides the company with a direct source of revenue through recurring shipments of an item tailored to consumer needs. 

 

It gives great:

 

Affinity. Going that extra mile and delivering a product when it is needed creates a strong bond between consumers and a brand. 

Flexibility. Any FMCG product can be subject to a subscription strategy. 

Digital Revenue. The best strategy for a stable income for the brand. Moreover, the time of purchase is an option predefined by the brand and accepted by the consumer.

Convenience. Having a product at their doorstep when needed takes one thing from the consumer’s head. 

New offerings. As the existing subscriptions work well for the consumers without their attention, there is plenty of room to present them with new products to fit into a subscription strategy.

Customer Experience. A very convenient form of purchase in pair with excellent customer service makes the consumer feel treated individually.

Insights. A choice of products for subscription says very much about the needs and preferences of the consumers.

 

Weak as a source of:

 

Product Development. This strategy is centered around recuring delivery of the product as it is. In this sense, it is about certain habits. And although there is always room for change, we are talking more about minor improvements than development.

 

This strategy does not assume product development. Any e-commerce brand can employ it. 

 

Succes example: Dollar Shave Club

 

Digital store

 

Fully functioning e-commerce website aimed at the sale of company’s products, and generate immersive customer experience through content. 

 

It gives great:

 

Affinity. Customers tend to trust and prefer the retailers they know. The same is true about digital stores. If the customer service is without flaws, the customers are unlikely to turn their back on the brand they can trust.

Flexibility. Any type of goods can be sold with this strategy.

New offerings. The structure of the digital store is ideal to highlight new and special offers. Moreover, this is what the consumers are used to and what they expect.

Insights. Most digital stores offer a large variety of products. On-site behavior patterns provide the brand with very valuable data. 

 

Weak as a source of:

 

Product Development. This strategy does not assume the product development, however, the feedback may help introduce improvements, especially in the case of the manufacturers.

Digital Revenue. A fully functioning e-commerce website is built around the transaction. A broad spectrum of clients, making decisions faster than in the case of other models, will generate decent revenue. Discarded cart however is also a norm, and lack of personalization will make the clients choose by the price. 

Convenience. Of all the presented strategies this is one of the least convenient. Depending on the UX execution, it may be even confusing. The consumer does not have to visit the retailer, but all the choices are still to be made and the consumer is usually left with them with only minor guidance. The personalization is usually also minor. 

Customer Experience. Depending on the execution, industry, the price range of the products, etc. the experience may even be delightful. But it is still simple shopping, with no extra mile in it.

 

Great for most e-commerce brands.

 

Succes example:Nespresso

 

Knowledge hub

 

This strategy engages consumers through content. Builds unique engagement centered on the brand – informs, educates, inspires. 

 

It gives great:

 

Customer Experience. Education and inspiration done right will always be a delightful experience.

Affinity. Sharing knowledge and expertise creates a strong bond and a sense of gratitude on the consumer’s side.

 

Weak as a source of:

 

Insights. This strategy is not centered around gathering consumer data, though the way consumers interact with content, shifts in their interests, and purchase intent, will surely provide the brand with some insight.

Product Development. By interaction and feedback, some information may prove useful in product development, but this model is not the best choice in this field.

Flexibility. Knowledge or know-how the brand shares are not flexible in themselves, because they are not a matter of preference or opinion.  

Digital Revenue. The nature of knowledge sharing and lack of e-commerce infrastructure is not designed to generate revenue. For this, consumers should be redirected to another source, i.eg. digital store.

Convenience. It is not the simplest way to buy a product, more a way to create brand affinity. 

New Offerings. Since the activities are not backed by e-commerce infrastructure, there is no room for this strategy to offer new transactions. The strategy is centered on the value of the product, not its price.

 

Any consumer brand will do fine with this strategy. It is, however, very specialized.

 

Succes example:Patron’s Cocktail Lab

 

The future of the D2C business model

 

Even after stratospheric growth during the pandemic, the D2C retail model does not slow down:

 

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The e-Commerce industry has seen ten years of growth compressed to three months! And it is projected to maintain 19,2% growth in 2021. The message, especially to all the consumer brands, is clear – D2C is not just a passing trend, rather a natural evolution of commerce. For a consumer brand, ignoring the evolution will likely mean to fade into the past.