1. Common misconceptions in Digital advertising campaigns
Performance marketing, or results-driven advertising, is a marketing approach focused on measuring, evaluating, and optimizing key metrics across channels where performance can be tracked transparently. One of the most common mistakes businesses make today is equating performance metrics such as CPC, CTR, or CPV with the overall success of a digital campaign. Simply having "good-looking" metrics—like low CPC and CPV or high CTR compared to industry benchmarks—is often incorrectly interpreted as a successful campaign, regardless of the original campaign objectives.
Consequences: When objectives are unclear and the wrong metrics are used, campaigns can easily deviate from their intended path, data becomes noisy, budgets are wasted on superficial fixes like lowering bids or increasing spend, and overall advertising performance is difficult to guarantee.
Solution:
Businesses need to clearly define the objectives of each campaign. Short-term performance metrics should not be equated with evaluation criteria for all types of campaigns, as each goal requires a tailored optimization approach and appropriate measurement system. Specifically, decisions should be based on four core factors:
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Clear objectives, KPIs, and budget: Before launching, define specific goals (e.g., increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or generating leads), appropriate metrics, and budget aligned with expectations. A branding campaign should not be evaluated solely on conversion rates; conversely, a conversion campaign cannot be judged merely by impressions.
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User data and channel selection: Understanding your target audience, their behavior, and preferred channels is critical for choosing the right platform. Targeting the wrong channels or audience will reduce ad performance, no matter how compelling the creative is.
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Ad content quality: Ads must not only be visually appealing but also address customer needs or pain points while aligning with platform formats and guidelines.
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Continuous monitoring and optimization: Campaigns should not just be "set and forget." Regularly monitor ad performance, analyze reports, identify issues, and continuously optimize for the best results.
2. Misconceptions about performance marketing in awareness campaigns
Awareness campaigns are typically deployed to expand the market, introduce new products, or build brand image. However, these campaigns often give rise to common misunderstandings about performance:
Case 1: Evaluating awareness effectiveness using Impressions, CTR, or Clicks
For advertising performance in this scenario, many businesses assume that low brand recall is due to insufficient impressions. However, the issue lies in the quality of reach, not quantity. High impressions that target the wrong audience will not achieve brand awareness goals. Additionally, metrics like clicks or high CTR can be misleading, as users may click out of curiosity, due to sensational messaging, or through non-meaningful interactions that do not generate real brand recognition.
Consequences: Advertisers may mistakenly believe the campaign is successful, while users actually do not remember or understand the brand, resulting in ineffective advertising performance.
Solution:
- Consider the relationship between reach and frequency: Too few ad exposures make it hard for viewers to remember the brand, while too many repetitions can annoy users or even backfire. Optimize frequency to ensure at least 50% of the target audience sees the ad at least three times—a basic threshold for brand messaging to be remembered, while maintaining a positive user experience.
- Evaluate ad placement: Ads distributed on low-quality or non-trusted websites, or in less-visible positions, may generate impressions but have minimal real impact. Prioritize placement on reputable platforms with visible, contextually appropriate positions.
- Choose proper targeting: Ensure ads reach the right audience at the right time, when they are genuinely interested. For example, promoting real estate during Tet, when demand is focused on food and clothing, will likely result in poor conversion.
- Conduct post-click analysis:
- Check bounce rate and time on site: If users click and leave within a few seconds, they are not genuinely interested.
- Consider engagement events: scrolls, CTA clicks, form submissions indicate user interest levels.
Additionally, Brand Lift Surveys can be used to measure campaign impact by surveying users to assess their awareness and perception of the brand after exposure.
Case 2: The Misconception That Performance Can Replace Branding
Another common misconception in advertising performance is that running performance ads (conversion-focused) will automatically also “boost” brand awareness.
Consequence: Performance ads usually target a narrow audience with clear calls-to-action – they are not meant for telling a brand story. Relying solely on performance alone may cause businesses to miss potential customer segments.
Solution:
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Separate the two campaign types and run them simultaneously: Businesses can run separate branding campaigns alongside performance campaigns. While performance campaigns focus on reaching a specific audience and driving immediate actions (like purchases or sign-ups), branding campaigns help strengthen brand awareness and build brand image in the minds of customers. Maintaining wide brand presence, even without immediate customer actions, is crucial to improving conversion potential in the future.
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Apply the Brandformance solution – combining branding and performance: Brandformance is a strategy that merges both branding and performance in a single campaign. This approach not only increases brand awareness but also optimizes immediate conversions by combining branding (building image, creating emotional connections with customers) with performance (optimizing actions and short-term results). Brandformance allows businesses to leverage both benefits without splitting budgets or strategies, resulting in a more comprehensive marketing campaign.
3. Misunderstandings in conversion campaigns
Conversion campaigns are often used to drive specific customer actions, such as purchases, sign-ups, or direct transactions. However, this type of advertising campaign also has common misconceptions about performance:
Case 1: Over-optimizing for short-term signals like CPC, CPL
Many advertisers track CPC and CPL metrics daily or hourly and react immediately to fluctuations – e.g., cutting budgets, turning off ad sets, or scaling aggressively. However, this “instant reflex” approach is more emotional than strategic. Short-term metrics often fluctuate naturally due to factors like user behavior, competitor budgets, or algorithm learning phases, making optimization based on 24-hour data unreliable.
Consequence: Disrupts the platform’s algorithm, preventing stable machine learning. Short-term data may look “good” but is unreliable and can waste budget.
Solution:
- Full-funnel thinking – from impression to deep conversion: Instead of stopping at CPC/CPL, track form completion rates, email open rates, purchase rates after remarketing, etc. This helps advertisers identify who truly has value rather than just who is cheap to reach.
- Set up campaigns with a stable structure, including:
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Focus on ad sets with a sufficiently large audience.
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Avoid over-segmenting the budget (e.g., splitting into 10 ad sets with only a few hundred per day).
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Keep ad sets running at least 5–7 days before evaluation.
- Segment audience by engagement level:
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Clicked but exited early → exclude from remarketing.
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Clicked + deep engagement but didn’t purchase → nurture via remarketing.
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Clicked + converted → create lookalike or save for future remarketing when launching new products.
Case 2: Increasing budget but no orders due to Low-Quality leads
The “low-quality leads” mindset is not wrong but insufficient. It only reflects a small snapshot of the problem, while many other factors affect conversion campaign performance.
Consequence: Focusing only on blaming leads can make businesses overlook core issues such as targeting the wrong audience, unconvincing ad content, inaccurate measurement, or poor coordination between Sales and Marketing. This results in continued budget waste without improving advertising performance.
Solution: Review the entire customer journey – from target audience, ad messaging, measurement methods, to consulting quality and care processes. Specifically:
- For low-quality leads: Create more detailed forms and set clear lead filtering criteria to improve incoming lead quality.
- Synchronize tracking systems (GA4, Meta, CRM, etc.): Ensure accurate and transparent data, review customer behavior data, and use A/B testing to identify the right potential audience.
- Clarify Sales & Marketing roles: Define clear responsibilities and KPIs for each department at each stage. For Sales, train in consulting skills – handling objections and monitoring response time after receiving leads. For Marketing, ensure the content on landing pages matches viewer needs and expectations.
Overall, the effectiveness of a campaign depends not only on content or budget but on the comprehensive operation, process, interdepartmental coordination, and strategy from brand awareness to conversion.
Currently, SmartAds is implementing the Brandformance solution – combining brand building and campaign performance optimization, directly linked with reputable publishers. This solution aims to help businesses reach the right potential customers at optimized costs while increasing conversion rates.
