Expiring Calls to Action for Digital Marketing Ads

Most people have been conditioned to ignore the “limited time offer” pitch in advertising because it’s a common gimmick to create false urgency.  Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for digital marketers to ignore their own limited time offers in their ads even when there is truly a defined expiration to the call to action.

I recently clicked on a LinkedIn ad for an event only to find that it took place two weeks ago. Of course that’s a disappointing experience for the user, but worse, the advertiser is wasting budget dollars on an ad for a product that’s unavailable.

It’s ideal to have a dedicated landing page for the offer in your ads but it’s disastrous if that CTA has expired.  Most paid ad platforms have an active run time calendar that will automatically stop the ad on a certain date.  Be sure to use that end date for your expiring call to action like after an event or a limited time offering. That will ensure you aren’t wasting your ad budget.  But don’t stop there, set a reminder for yourself or establish an ad calendar to cycle in your next time sensitive offer so that your ad campaign results don’t plummet.

The relative low-cost and ease of establishing paid advertising on search engines and social media platforms often leads to a “set it and forget it” complacency.  Keep an active inventory of your ads to make sure that it’s promoting an offer that will actually generate results.