24/7 Real Media's Ari Bluman outlines what it takes to run a highly effective online campaign.

Most business people pride themselves on the cool commercial logic that they apply to their decision making, and those who formulate online ad campaigns are no exception. But as someone who sells online marketing services and inventory to media professionals, I can tell you that all too often it simply doesn't happen that way. I have seen every shade of behavior: from people willfully driving their campaigns onto the rocks for a total loss to others steaming unswervingly to their destinations to reap the rewards of success. So what makes the second group -- the ones who succeed -- different from the rest? What do they do, and what do you have to do to be like them and run a highly effective online campaign?

It's really not that complicated.

First, know why you are doing what you are doing, and make sure that it will actually achieve your aim. Your business goals and objectives in running a campaign -- to sell a given amount of product at a given cost, perhaps, or to disseminate a given piece of information to a given number of people -- should dictate absolutely everything that you do; the degree to which you achieve them should be the only measure of your success. Expenditure of money or time on anything else is absolute waste. What, for example, would you say to someone who bought a Porsche rather than a Chevy to deliver pizza? If you didn't simply dismiss them as a lunatic, I sincerely hope that you'd say it had nothing to do with selling pies, and everything to do with satisfying the demands of their overgrown egos. Well -- insisting on being first in the search engine results whatever the price, or on displaying your company's banner on the most expensive page of the most expensive website is no different: It is much, much more likely to be driven by vanity than by sound business decision making. Far too many advertisers pursue volume, or reach, or the presence of their message on a site that they consider prestigious in spite of the fact that doing so is entirely contrary to their business goals. Habit #1: Understand your goals, understand how to reach them, and pursue them unwaveringly.

Second: Know your audience, and point your message directly and exclusively at it. You may be the rare marketer with a product best sold by exposing it to the entire population, but you probably are not. Do not waste precious resources directing ads for high-powered motorbikes to elderly women. Every time you direct your ad to someone who is outside your target audience, you throw money away just as surely as if you set it alight, and you reduce the return on your remaining advertising dollars proportionately. Habit #2: Ads are selling tools. Don't use them on people who won't buy.

Third: Now that you know who your online audience is, use targeting to reach it. You can do it by content, behavior, geography, demographics, keyword or by any combination of these. Find the best combination, and be prepared to fine tune as your campaign progresses. There are targeting choices to suit virtually every imaginable marketing requirement. Habit #3: Conserve resources. With the technology and techniques available, you have no excuse for wasting them.

Fourth: Get the creative right. Make sure your message says what you want said, in a way that will be effective with your audience. Make it clear, and make it concise. Don't let artistry blind you to irrelevance. Vary what you say and how you say it, too: successful campaigns generally ring the changes, with multiple messages or variations on one main message, delivered in multiple sizes. Habit #4: Match your creative to your offer and target audience, and don't sing on one note. If you send the wrong message or bore your audience, you'll get the wrong result.

Fifth: Use search engine marketing as part of your campaign mix. Many marketers omit this element, but without it their chances of running highly effective campaigns are close to zero. More than 98 percent of the most successful campaigns have a search component. Habit #5: Search works -- use it. Once you have, you'll never leave it out.

Sixth: Use the information that the technology produces to make your current and future campaigns more effective. Online campaigns produce more data, in more digestible form, than any other marketing channel, and are more easily adjusted in more ways as they proceed. You can track reach and precision of targeting; you can track results by creative, ad size, placement, search engine, keyword, behavior, demographics, or geography and by any combination of any of these. So do it. Habit #6: Track your results in every way you can, and then …

Seventh: Analyze those results, and use the results of your analysis to optimize your campaign. If it's working, make it work better. If it isn't working, find out why, then make the necessary change or, if that won't work, direct future ads elsewhere. Habit #7: Never stop trying to do it better. Analyze and optimize your campaign for maximum effect.

There's no mystery to any of this. You might even say that this whole article is simply a statement of the obvious. And I would be forced to agree: It is obvious, but it is so obvious that for many people, it is, apparently, hidden in plain sight. Far too many campaigns have muddy business goals, have only the vaguest idea of who, if anyone, comprises their intended audience, fail to target that audience if they manage to identify it, use creative which is inappropriate or inadequate in any number of ways, leave search out of their plans entirely, and take no advantage at all of the enormous scope that online advertising offers for ongoing campaign optimization. It's a trap, and it's one that highly intelligent people fall into. But now that you know that the trap is there, you can avoid it, and can make every one of your online campaigns a highly effective one.

As senior vice president, media and technology, Ari Bluman is responsible for U.S. Media Sales operations, including all business development, ad operations, sales and client services for the 24/7 Web Alliance. Until his appointment to this position, Mr. Bluman served from November 2002 as vice president, distribution and operations. He has also served as vice president, direct solutions, direct marketing, inside sales and email brokerage, as well as an account executive. A graduate of University of Maryland, from which he holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science, Mr. Bluman joined 24/7 Real Media in 1997.