How to Launch Paid Ads: a Quick Guide With a Hands-on Checklist 

Behind every high-performing paid ad campaign is a simple truth: success comes from preparation and optimization, not blind luck. With all the variety of ad formats and campaign types, the process can be broken down into 5 crucial stages. In this guide, we provide you with the most essential practical information about each of them. 

Moreover, we offer a hands-on checklist template that includes detailed, step-by-step instructions. This will allow you to easily launch paid ads without missing a thing. 

5 Steps to Launch Paid Ads That Drive Results

In this overview, you’ll find practical tips for setting campaign goals, selecting the right campaign type and ad platform, and developing an effective targeting strategy. We also cover the basics of preparing creatives and ad campaign analytics.

1. Decide on Campaign Goals

Before you launch paid ads, it’s important to clearly define your goals and communicate them to stakeholders. This will provide the foundation for all the decisions you will need to make when preparing for the launch. 

Some of the most common goals for a paid ad campaign are:

• Generating new leads
• Increasing brand awareness
• Retargeting past visitors
• Improving customer retention
• Boosting app downloads
• Increasing website traffic
• Improving engagement on social media

The goals should align with your organization’s business objectives. This allows you to maximize the business value of your ad campaign. If there are several goals, it’s best to prioritize them based on the expected impact and run a separate campaign for each goal.

To envision what success can look like, check the benchmarks for the key ad metrics in your industry. Additionally, it’s a good idea to revisit ad reports from your previous campaigns. All this information will help you gauge potential results and set realistic objectives. 

One best practice is to ensure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example, your key objective may be to “increase website traffic by 25% by March.” 

2. Select the Campaign Type

Once you’ve defined the goals, you can think about the best way to achieve them. There are several campaign types to consider. They differ in terms of parameters such as approach (or intent) and media format.

The main types of paid ad campaigns by intent:

• Awareness campaign: Get seen. This type of campaign allows you to introduce your brand or product to a new audience segment or new market. Here, the focus is on maximizing visibility, reach, and impressions. This helps you build brand recognition and improve brand recall, while getting direct conversions is not a primary goal. 
• Consideration campaign: Get interest. At this stage, your potential customers are already familiar with your brand and are open to considering it, along with your competitors. Campaigns of this type communicate your value proposition to the audience. This can be done with ads highlighting your product’s USPs, featuring success cases and testimonials, and so on.
• Conversion campaign: Get sales. The two previous ad campaign types prepare the ground for an effective conversion campaign. Its focus is on encouraging the customers to perform the target action: complete a purchase, book a demo, subscribe to your blog, and so on. Such campaigns often promote special offers, discounts, or other time-sensitive benefits, creating a sense of urgency.

The selected campaign type should align with the goals you defined in the previous step. Each of these campaign types can be implemented in different ad formats.

Campaign types by channel and media format:

• Search ad campaign – ads on the search engine results page, such as Google Search or Bing
• Display ad campaign – ads on various websites, typically banners
• Video ad campaign – video ads, usually on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube or social media networks
• Shopping ad campaign – ads presented as product cards, featuring an image, price, and short description. These ads appear on the search engine results page when searching for a product.
• Social media advertising campaign – ads on social media platforms (banners, promoted posts, etc.)

When considering different ad formats, take into account your audience’s preferences and industry specifics. This will help you determine which format is most relevant to your target group. 

3. Define Your Audience And Targeting Strategy

The next important component you need to launch paid ads successfully is the audience. It’s best if you already have validated ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles) that describe your main customer personas and their pain points. 

It’s useful to conduct some additional research to see what’s been trending among your audience lately, what they’re discussing, and what their most recent challenges are. All this is essential for devising an effective ad strategy and delivering a focused message. 

When you have enough context about your potential customers, their lives, and behavior, you are ready to choose your approach to targeting. 

You can target by parameters such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Activities
• Industries 
• Job titles
• Interests

Note

It’s crucial not to target your ads at a segment that is either too broad or too narrow. In the former case, you will end up paying for impressions that don’t convert. In the latter case, your bid will need to be quite high. Aim for a balanced approach and adjust based on results.

At this stage, it’s also time to decide on the platform where you want to launch paid ads. Every platform has its distinct audience and offers specific targeting options. For instance, Instagram and LinkedIn attract different demographic groups and are used for different purposes. When selecting one or several advertising platforms to work with, ensure they align with your audience and targeting needs.

Some of the most popular platforms for paid advertising and digital marketing are Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads, X Ads (formerly Twitter Ads), and Bing Ads (formerly Microsoft Ads).

4. Prepare Creative Assets 

Depending on the campaign format you’ve selected, you will need to prepare messaging, copy, designs, or video materials. The creative assets should revolve around your product’s USPs, clearly communicating the benefits a customer will get after making a purchase. 

Here are some tips that will help you launch paid ads with compelling, high-quality creatives:

• Prepare several versions of your ad. Experiment with headlines, visuals, and call-to-actions to run A/B tests and determine which approach performs better.
• Communicate value in the first 3 seconds. This applies to various ad formats, including videos, banners, and text ads. To achieve this, craft attention-grabbing messages and vivid visual materials.
• Align the message with the campaign type. You can use more generic and creative messages for an awareness campaign and prepare more straightforward and descriptive CTAs for the conversion campaign. 
• Ensure consistency in messaging. Your landing page should continue the conversation that started in the ad. The messaging should fit, and it must be clear how to act on your ad’s CTA. For example, if it’s an ecommerce campaign and your ad promotes a specific product, don’t make the user comb through your catalogue to find it. Create a landing page that aligns with the ad campaign goals and guides users toward conversion.

5. Support Your Campaign With Analytics

PPC data analysis is a powerful tool that can deliver many valuable insights. To launch paid ads successfully, you need to carefully analyze performance data from your past campaigns and use the findings to shape your strategy. 

It’s also crucial to ensure that data collection for the new campaign will work normally. Double-check that the conversion tracking is set up correctly and aligns with your goals.

Here are the key pay-per-click metrics to monitor:

• Total impressions
• Clicks
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Conversions
• Conversion rate
• Cost per conversion
• Cost per 1k impressions (CPM)
• Engagement rate
• Ad spend

You can collect and analyze data in Google Analytics 4, review trends directly in your ad platform’s native reports, or set up a custom PPC dashboard that updates metrics in near-real time. Watching your results closely allows you to adjust your strategy quickly: prioritizing what works best, pausing underperforming ads, experimenting with bidding, and so on.

For more detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to launch paid ads, please refer to the checklist template provided in the next section.

A Free Launch Paid Ads Checklist Template

This checklist was prepared with the help of Smart Checklist for Jira by Titan Apps. It covers the main stages in-depth and allows you to launch paid ads confidently. As everything is documented in granular detail, this ensures you won’t forget anything essential. 

To make this checklist even more helpful, you can customize it to better fit your specific processes – for example, add more detailed steps for the required approvals. This checklist can be used as a template and serve you for multiple campaigns. This is especially beneficial for ad agencies that manage dozens of clients and run multiple paid advertising campaigns simultaneously. 

With a structured launch paid ads checklist, it’s easier to organize processes more efficiently and optimize time.

Preview Markdown view

# Launch Paid Ads Checklist

## Define Campaign Goals

- Identify main objectives and focus (brand awareness, leads, remarketing)
- Check the paid ads benchmarks
> * Industry benchmarks
> * Benchmarks from your previous campaigns
> * Identify the target values for CPC, CPM, CVR
- Confirm budget allocation
- Check competitor activity

## Configure Targeting

- Define target audience segments by the key parameters
> * Demographics
> * Interests
>* Market segments
>* Job titles
- Set geographic and language targeting

## Choose the Ad Platform

- Define the best fit based on your goals and audience
- Analyze audience targeting possibilities on different ad platforms
- Check content distribution options
> Search ads, videos, banners, etc.

## Prepare Creative Assets

- Finalize ad copy for your target audience
> * If you have several ICPs, create several messages
> * Prepare several copy groups for each audience (for A/B testing)
- Adapt copies to each platform’s requirements
> Number of symbols limit and other requirements for specific ad formats:
> * banner copy
> * headlines
> * description
> * main text
- Create images and/or video assets in the correct formats
- Create sidelinks or additional assets, if needed
- Proofread all your creative materials
- Create UTMs to track your campaign results

## Set Up Campaign Structure on Your Ad Platform

- Select placements
- Choose ad formats
- Choose the campaign goals
> Based on previous performance and targeting goals
- Create your audience segment
> In-market segments, interests, your client list, remarketing
- Choose geolocations
- Apply custom or lookalike audiences
- Exclude unnecessary audience segments
> * People who have already completed a purchase
> * Customers who have already converted in another way
> * Irrelevant geo segments
- Add ad creatives, copies, and additional assets, if needed
- Set campaign start and end dates
- Set campaign budget
- Add UTM parameters to all destination URLs
- Check that your conversion tracking setup is complete

## Launch and Initial Monitoring

- Activate your campaign
- Verify that all ads are approved and delivered correctly
- Check early performance against your historical KPIs or market benchmarks
- Optimize underperforming ads
> Adjust the audience settings, bidding strategy, conversion type, budget, etc.
- Scale best-performing campaigns

Copy the template Copied

For your convenience, here’s the same checklist, now divided into sections based on the stage:

How to Add a Launch Paid Ads Checklist to Jira as a Reusable Template

Note

Not using Jira? This template can also be used on Monday.com. Install Smart Checklist to get started.

1. Install Smart Checklist for Jira from the Atlassian Marketplace. 
2. Copy the checklist template we shared earlier and paste it into the Smart Checklist section of your work item. If necessary, adjust the formatting, add more steps, tag responsible people, and add deadlines.
3. Save the checklist as a template. Open the Smart Checklist menu, as shown in the image below, and select “Save as a template”. That’s it! Your launch paid ads template is ready. 

Smart Checklists allow you to create feature-rich checklists that contain all the necessary information. For example, you can use headers, tag people, add links to brand guidelines, mark selected steps as mandatory, and set custom statuses for checklist items.

All this makes it easy to follow the established process and ensure consistency. Moreover, using checklist templates enhances transparency. It’s easy to track progress on a specific campaign and pick up where you left off, even if you are juggling multiple campaigns. 

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Best Practices That Will Help You Launch Paid Ads Successfully

• Use lookalike audiences. Analyze your previous ad campaigns and the early data from the new campaign. Identify the highest-performing audience segments and use lookalike audiences for them.
• Make your bid competitive. PPC platforms typically suggest a bid that is high enough to place your ads in front of your target audience. So, it’s best to bid a bit higher than suggested, at least in the beginning. After your campaign has been running for a while, you can analyze the results and optimize the messaging and CTR. Then, you can slightly decrease your bid without compromising results.
• Prioritize top performers. Allocate more budget to campaigns, ads, and audience segments that perform best and pause those that underperform. If you launch paid ads on several ad platforms, redistribute the budget in favour of the channels that bring you the best results.
• Leverage remarketing campaigns. “Warm” audiences often demonstrate better conversion rates than “cold” ones. Analyse the data and identify which funnel stages appear to be problematic. This will help you identify potential issues, address them, and run a successful remarketing campaign. 
• Use platform-native formats. For optimal effect, combine different ad formats and incorporate platform-native options. For example, carousels on LinkedIn or vertical videos on Instagram Stories. This enables you to leverage the distinct features of each platform and foster more effective engagement.

We hope this guide will help you launch effective ad campaigns that produce tangible value!

Article by Olga Cheban

Content Writer at TitanApps. I love it when my writing helps people find smarter ways to manage their time. Whether for individual professionals or large companies, even small changes in managing daily tasks can have a huge impact. My goal is to share practical advice that promotes efficiency and facilitates growth.