Display Advertising: 7 Tips to Drive More Phone Leads & Conversions

When consumers are shopping online on their mobile devices, it’s likely that they’ll want to call your business to get more information. And they’re not shy about clicking on ads, as 63% of consumers will click on an ad to call your business. 

Your display ads, from the targeting to the ad copy, need to help consumers understand what action you want them to take. While display ads are still heavily used for brand awareness, there is an opportunity for marketers to drive direct conversions both online and offline from display campaigns.

In this post, we’ll cover the basics of display advertising and its benefits, as well as how to drive more phone leads from your campaigns.

What Is Display Advertising?

Display advertising is a form of online advertising that involves the creation and placement of visual ads on websites and social media platforms. These ads can include static or interactive graphics, videos, and animations. Display advertising is beneficial for businesses as it allows them to reach a large audience, target specific demographics, and increase brand visibility. It also provides the opportunity to track and analyze ad performance, optimize ad campaigns for better results, and potentially increase conversions and sales.

What Are Common Types of Display Ads?

• Banner: The rectangular or square ads you see bordering the top, bottom, or sides of the content you read are banner ads. The size, placement, and content all play an equally important role when it comes to attracting potential customers. 
• Pop-Up: These are the pesky ads that get in the way of your interactions with a website with a redirect to a new tab or entirely new window. They’re our least favorite, but they can be effective. Try to empathize with your audience and utilize content that is worth interrupting a user’s online experience! 
• Video: Video ads are great for building brand awareness and driving traffic to your website. The combination of animated imagery and sound works really well to grab your audience's attention.
• Lightbox Display Ads: These are great attention-getters as they start off by looking like regular everyday online ads, but once a user hovers or clicks the ad, it expands to a larger ad format! 
• Native Ads: This style is less intrusive and is made to blend in with its surrounding content. These can take the form of a sponsored article on a publisher's website, for example — sometimes you might not even know that what you're looking at is an ad!
• Interstitial Ads: These are similar to pop up ads, but are strategically placed to show up as users are navigating between content. For example, if someone is  reading an article, the ad pops up after a chapter is completed with the option to interact or continue to the next chapter. 

5 Key Benefits of Display Advertising

1. Increased Brand Visibility

‍Display ads can help increase brand visibility by promoting your product or service in front of a large audience. This can help increase your business’s brand awareness and recognition, especially if the ads are strategically placed on high-traffic websites or social media platforms.

2. Targeted Audience Reach

‍Display advertising allows you to target specific audiences that are relevant to your industry by basing them on factors such as demographics, interests, behaviors, and location. This can help ensure that your ads are shown to the most relevant potential customers, increasing the likelihood of conversion and return on investment. 

3. Creative Flexibility

‍Display ads offer a high degree of creative flexibility, allowing businesses to use a range of formats, including images, videos, animations, and interactive elements. This can help create engaging, visually appealing ads that capture users' attention and drive engagement. 

4. Cost-Effectiveness

‍Display advertising can be a cost-effective way to reach potential customers online, especially compared to other forms of advertising such as television or print ads. Many platforms also offer self-service options that allow businesses to set their own budgets and bids, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes. 

5. Measurable Results

‍Display advertising offers a range of metrics and analytics to measure the performance of ads, including impressions, clicks, conversions, and return on investment. This allows businesses to track performance on a granular level, and achieve better results over time.

7 Tips to Drive More Phone Leads from Display Ads

Now that we’ve covered the basics, we’ll get into 7 ways you can drive more phone leads from your display ads right now!

Tip 1: Use Calls as the Main CTA

Brand ads are fine for awareness, but if you want to drive conversions you need to give people a reason to click. Use your ad copy to its greatest advantage: Tell consumers the exact action you want them to take.

Tell Them to Call

• To drive calls from display, your ad creative must include language that tells the viewer to call.
• As consumers we’ve been trained to see display ads as branding and disruptive to our user experience. How else will they know how to take action?
• Remember: Also think about the language you use on display landing pages. Callers will be directed there from your ad.
• Keep your message consistent to your ad, and give visitors the option to call again. They can click-to-call from your landing page as well!

Tip 2: Include Calls in Targeting

If a customer has called your business before from display or any marketing channel, use that as criteria to target your ads by integrating call data in your DMP and DSPs. If you know which audience has a higher likelihood of calling you, you can directly target your ads to them.

The Right Audience

• Use your first-party data to retarget website visitors and build lookalike audiences based on existing customers.
• Retarget them with display ads and use language that incentivizes them to call. Test out different “Call Now” CTAs and direct them to visit your website where you can encourage them to call again.

Create Exclusions

• Once you know who has called your business and converted on the phone, you can also use that information to exclude them from your display targeting.
• Don’t waste marketing dollars driving calls from current customers who might be calling for support, for example.

Tip 3: Avoid Wasting Budget on Bad Targeting

No digital marketer wants to waste ad budget. But that’s exactly what bad targeting can do if you’re looking to drive more calls from display.

• Remember the Device: Driving calls from display is about optimizing ads for smartphones. It might seem like a no-brainer, but this means ensuring your ads are targeted to only mobile devices; namely, smartphones. And ensure you have a “Call Now” call-to-action prominently displayed on the landing page.

• Consider Time of Day: What happens if someone sees your display ad at 11pm, visits your landing page with a Call Now CTA, and calls? Ensure you target your ads by time of day. Unless your business is open at that time, and you’re staffed to receive calls, you’ll only confuse consumers and direct them to your voicemail.

Tip 4: Use Hyper-Local Targeting

When you use hyper-local targeting to reach local smartphone owners, it’s as though you’re speaking directly to them. This is especially important for franchises or businesses with multiple locations.

• Remember: Local phone numbers drive 3x more calls than toll-free numbers. (Include them on landing pages too.)
• Use local language in your ad copy: It creates even more relevance when paired with hyper-local targeting.

Tip 5: Test a Call Button as the CTA

Get even more customers calling by adding click-to-call to your mobile display ads. It works similarly to mobile search marketing, where consumers can click on an ad to place a call.

When consumers click on your call-enabled display ads, they trigger a call dialog from their smartphones while also directing them to your landing page.

Tip 6: Use Imagery that Stands Out from the Crowd

You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, this is doubly true for display ads. Imagery gives you an opportunity to differentiate yourself from the hundreds of written ads people are bombarded with every day. It also allows you to create some sort of emotional appeal which increases your odds of engagement while reinforcing brand recognition.  

Tip 7: A/B Test Your Landing Page to Drive More Conversions

A/B testing of display ad landing pages is a powerful tool for optimizing conversions. By comparing the performance of two or more landing pages with subtle variations, businesses can determine which version performs better in terms of driving traffic and converting visitors. This information can be used to refine landing pages and improve the user experience, resulting in higher conversion rates. A/B testing can also help identify areas of a landing page that are causing confusion or frustration for users, allowing businesses to make necessary adjustments to improve engagement and increase conversions.

Additional Reading

Want to learn more tactics for increasing revenue from your marketing campaigns? Check out these resources:

• How to Optimize Marketing Spend with First-Party Data from Phone Calls
• How to Execute High-Impact Marketing Campaigns (with Examples!)
• How to Calculate Your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) — and Improve It