There are a lot of ways to advertise goods or services on the Internet. The choice depends on where exactly your target audience “dwells”. Targeted advertising is very popular on social networks (and not only in them).
I will tell you what it is and how to set it up.
What is targeting?
Targeting is online advertising that is distributed on different platforms in accordance with the characteristics or interests of the target audience. This ad is shown only to those users who may be interested in the advertised product and service.
Who is targeted advertising suitable for?
This type of advertising is suitable for almost any business. The most important thing is to correctly identify the target audience and choose the most optimal way to distribute your ads. It is also important that the profile visual does not pump up.
An important nuance is that the business you are promoting must not contradict the policy of the site and the legislation of the state. For companies with expensive products and those who focus on b2b, it is more difficult and more expensive to set up targeted advertising due to a narrow target audience.
Pros of targeting
Targeted advertising has a lot of advantages, thanks to which it has gained such huge popularity. And here are the most important ones:
- Quick start. It takes an average of 20 minutes to create and set up targeted ads. Further, of course, the moderators check it for compliance with the site’s requirements, but usually it takes from several minutes to an hour in time.
- Possibility of making changes. You can launch a group of test ads, see which ones are being promoted successfully, and remove the less successful ones from circulation. On the basis of the results obtained, by the way, you can correct the target audience if you have not defined it accurately enough.
- Availability. Even someone who is growing in the small business can afford to launch targeting.
- Measurable result. You can find out about the results of the advertising campaign in the statistics section. It will show you where, how and what kind of people come to you.
- Competition. You can formulate a lucrative offer and set up a target so that it will be shown to your competitors’ subscribers.
- Personalization. You can launch a target for a narrow audience, for example, for representatives of a specific profession or residents of a specific area in your city.
- Hit the target. If everything is configured correctly, then only those who are really interested in your product will see the ad.
- It always works. And it doesn’t matter if you have a website or groups on social networks. Some platforms allow you to create a special form for collecting data without unnecessary transitions to other sites.
Minuses
You can’t do without cons, and targeted advertising also has them:
- The need for constant audience involvement. For your ad to be as successful as possible, you need to monitor how your target audience reacts to it. This helps you make corrections right away if something goes wrong.
- Working with a cold audience. The warmer the customer, the more likely they are to buy your product. But the problem is that people are not sitting on social networks to search for products and view ads. Accordingly, the level of their motivation and interest in your product is not so high initially.
- Collection and processing of personal data of users. The battle for online privacy continues. This is why some users may hide personal information. But the effectiveness of targeted advertising only suffers from this – clicks are more expensive, and hits are less and less.
- Strict rules in ad platforms. Some creative posts may not pass moderation due to certain hard restrictions.
- Thorough customization. If you don’t pay enough attention to this process, your ad simply won’t hit the right target.
Differences from contextual advertising
The biggest difference is in the way you segment your audience. As we remember, targeting is shown in accordance with the characteristics and interests of the user. But contextual advertising is shown in search results when you enter a specific keyword.
Targeted ad formats
Regardless of the platform for placing ads, there are several formats of targeted advertising on the Internet. The most basic are text and text-graphic blocks. Then there are various native posts in the feed, banners, carousels, stories, and so on.
Ways of placing ads
There are a huge number of platforms that you can place targeted ads on. These are mainly social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and many others. There are separate Yandex and Google services where you can post such ads.
In social networks, there are two options for placing an ad – in the feed and in stories. In the first case, everything is clear – the publication is shown to potential users when scrolling the feed. But with stories, everything is much more interesting, because more than 500 million people watch them every day. By the way, on Instagram, users are increasingly attracted to like or comment on a post by sharing it in stories.
Target setting methods
Before you start advertising your product with a target, you need to prepare carefully. Namely – to think over a promotion strategy, to understand which platform has the most of your potential customers, to study the rules for placing advertisements on it, and also to draw up a portrait of the target audience. In targeting, you can segment depending on certain parameters, and here are the most basic ones:
- Demography. This includes nationality, economic status of the user, gender, age, educational level, employment, income, and so on.
- Psychography. This parameter takes into account the values of a potential buyer, his personality traits, various interests and lifestyle.
- Behavior. This category includes the history of transactions carried out on the Internet – open and frequently visited sites, recent purchases, actions made on a certain resource, and so on.
- Time and time zone. In the target, you can select the time and days of the week for displaying advertisements. Let’s say at night, on holidays or during company opening hours.
- Geography. This category includes the region where ads are displayed – country, city, district, street, sometimes even house number. It also takes into account which establishments your potential client visits most often.
- Purpose. This refers to exactly what the company wants to achieve when it finishes displaying an ad on the Internet. For example, increase traffic, reach, increase conversions, or the number of leads.
This division is basic, but there are other options for segmenting the target audience. For example, you can select people who use specific devices and applications – computers or smartphones, browsers or applications.
The next step in setting up targeted ads is creating your ad. You choose the format of future advertising, compose text and graphic materials.
Next comes the setting of audience parameters directly on the advertising platform. You create an advertising campaign, choose a promotion goal, specify the target audience and display locations. After that, the budget is set up – you will see how much the ad costs and set the payment methods. All that remains is to send your ad for moderation and wait for its approval.
It is recommended to analyze the results of an advertising campaign at least once a day. If something goes wrong, you can make adjustments at the right time – change the headline, body text, or images. If your ad doesn’t work, you can stop serving it altogether.
Targeting cost
Everything is complicated here – there is no single price tag for targeted advertising. It is set depending on the characteristics of your target audience, as well as the number and activity of competitors. For this reason, the price is set for clicks, impressions, or actions taken. The most commonly used calculation methods are CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per mile). In general, there are a lot of ways to set a fee for a targeted action, and almost every one was described in detail earlier on our site. For example, about CPA, CPL and CPO.
Common mistakes
When placing targeted advertising, you need to choose the right promotion methods, as well as soberly assess the capabilities of your product. There are several mistakes that are allowed in this type of placement:
- Inflated or understated rates. In the first case, there is a risk of spending the budget too quickly, and in the second – simply not reaching the desired audience.
- Unnecessary restrictions. If the system does not have information about the income of a certain group of people, they may simply fall out of the audience, and the coverage will be lower than the desired indicator.
- Incorrect ad design. If the text is not informative enough, and the quality of pictures and videos is poor, the audience will simply ignore your message.
- Lack of fine tuning. Some sites may not have filters for more accurate segmentation. As a result, the target audience is blurred, impressions are wasted, and the conversion rate drops.
Let’s summarize
Targeting is truly one of the most versatile, popular and effective methods of advertising products on the web. It is often inexpensive as well. Most often, targeting is used on the Instagram social network – flipping through stories, you can find ads every 3-5 profiles. I’m not going to talk about what’s going on in the feed … But another thing is important – to understand whether this method of promotion and the chosen platform really suits your product.