You may not be getting the kind of results you want from your ad spend at a certain point. Traffic to your website might be slowing down, and people just aren't clicking through your ads as often. You might be worried that your budget outweighs the results, making your campaigns not worth the effort during these slow periods.
To help avoid wasting more of your ad dollars, you might consider pausing your campaigns until they're worth running again. However, this can do more harm than good in many cases.
There are many benefits of keeping your ad campaigns active, even if your results are less than satisfactory. Here are some specific reasons why you shouldn't stop advertising if your campaigns are currently underperforming.
Consistency Is Key
Like many other efforts, it's essential to be consistent if you want to see results. Advertising consistency can help keep your business in front of your target audiences. Even if those audiences seem to be temporarily dwindling around the holidays or other slow periods, you might miss out on some of the most lucrative opportunities if you stop your ad spend altogether.
A particularly valuable lead might see your ads at just the right time when things seem slow, but pausing your ad campaigns at the wrong time could prevent that prospect from ever becoming a lead. The best way to get the most from your ad spend is to be consistent and keep your ads out there as often as possible.
Stopping Advertising Loses Momentum
If you stop your advertising, you'll lose the momentum you may have gained. If your ads are beginning to reach the right people at the right times, pausing your ad spend could slow things down even more. While your PPC ads may have top Google rankings, your brand will essentially fade altogether if you choose to stop your campaigns. People who may have recognized and been aware of your brand may also eventually forget about you if you don't stay top-of-mind. The best way to stay on top is to stay there at all times. Otherwise, you'll be giving competitors the chance to take your place and steal the spotlight.
You Can Still Connect with People During Slow Periods
Even when the market seems sluggish and your ads don't seem worth the expense, you still have the chance to connect with potential customers at these times. People will always be looking for the right brands in the offseason, even if many others aren't. If you cut off your ad spend altogether, those audiences won't be as likely to find you during those crucial moments when they otherwise would have seen your ads. Those prospects could become loyal, repeat customers with a high overall customer lifetime value (CLV).
You'll See Better Results with Consistent Investment
It also makes more sense from a budget standpoint to continually invest in advertising because you'll see better results through higher ROI. The more you advertise, the more high-value customers you're likely to attract and make those efforts worthwhile. Otherwise, you'll be spending more on other aspects of your business with decreased ROI from ad spend. If you want to drive better results more consistently, you need to maintain your advertising campaigns.
Continuous Advertising Helps Achieve Long-Term Goals
Businesses use advertising to meet long-term marketing goals. Pausing ad campaigns at any point could make it harder to achieve those goals, even if it may seem beneficial in the short term. Your goals might be to attract a certain amount of website traffic over a particular period, achieve a specific amount of impressions or views for ads, or reach a target number of conversions within a year. Regardless of the goals you have in place, you should look at advertising as a continuous process to help you achieve those goals on schedule.
Pausing Can Set You Back on Certain Platforms
On some systems, pausing can seriously damage your campaigns. On Google and specific social media marketing platforms like Facebook, pausing can reset the algorithms, which means that you'll need to ramp up your campaigns again when you choose to resume. During that ramp-up period, when you are regaining momentum, you're likely to lose out on potential leads for a more extended time as competitors stay ahead. It's best to keep your campaigns going to avoid that potential disadvantage.
Keep Your Campaigns Going to Get the Results You Want
It can seem easy to simply pause your ad spend when your campaigns aren't doing as well as you'd initially hoped, but sticking with your campaigns can help you remain competitive. By maintaining your campaigns during those slower periods, you can stay visible and on the minds of your audiences, connect with the right people at the right time, stay above competitors who might pause their campaigns to your advantage and achieve your long-term goals.
