It is no secret that the most relevant characteristic of the quality of advertising is its thematic nature. Roughly speaking, we are talking about the conformity of materials that call for the purchase of a product or service with the interests of those people to whom they are shown. For example, you need to advertise fishing nets where you can meet fishermen. A tool with which you can maximize the interests of the client and the advertiser is called targeting.
Targeted advertising is ...
The name "targeted advertising" comes from the English word target, which translates as "target." It turns out that such advertising can be safely called target, since it is intended solely for the audience who is interested in showing the ad and in receiving the advertised product or service.
How this interest is shown can be traced from our example with fishermen. If a person may really need to buy a fishing rod, he will certainly respond to such an announcement and, most likely, even make a purchase if the offer is really worthwhile.
According to sales statistics conducted by almost all companies in any business field, you can see that targeted advertising is the most effective sales channel. Steeper than it can only be rumors and personal recommendations of regular customers to their friends and acquaintances. Therefore, in fact, this way of promoting a product is most valued.
Where is this type of advertising used?
In fact, the scope of this type of advertising is unlimited. You can start, for example, by placing ads with the services of a lawyer near the courthouse (as the most vague targeting) and end with contextual advertising on the Internet, which are displayed on thematic sites (where the selection of materials that the user sees up to his browser version is carried out). You can see examples of targeting everywhere, and, in fact, almost everywhere, this format of promotion and dialogue with the client can be confidently called the most effective.
Yes, this is not the easiest way to convey information to the client - targeted advertising. The cost of promoting products in this way significantly exceeds the price of advertising services with a wide coverage - one that appeals immediately to many segments of the population, representatives of age and social groups (traditional billboards placed throughout the city can serve as a vivid example). However, as already noted, sales statistics justify the costs that go to such a promotion format.
Social Media Targeted Ads
Relatively recently (over the last 5-7 years), advertising on the Internet has become extremely popular , and with it - and targeting using social networks. Naturally, the pioneer in this area was Facebook, which showed how narrowly the advertiser can set the scope of the audience who will see his materials. Setting targeted advertising on social networks allows you to clearly define user groups, taking into account their age, gender, location and even personal interests. For example, you can show your ad to those who read a particular author, is a member of a group dedicated to a sports game, or likes to watch a certain genre of films. You must admit that with the set of such characteristics that social networks have regarding each user, the possibilities of advertising targeting are simply unlimited.
A bit about targeting options
In order to realize how accurate such an advertisement can be, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with an example. So you will clearly understand that targeted advertising is the real key to the success of advertisers.
Imagine that you need to increase sales of a bookstore located in a specific city. You only need to create a beautiful landing page to receive orders and set up an advertising campaign on the network where you would like to try to work (let it be Facebook). So, it’s enough to draw up the title and text of the announcement, pick up a picture, and then indicate a specific group of people: these should be the residents of your city (this is obvious), as well as reading enthusiasts (these are probably those who have indicated “Books” in their interests). So the circle of your audience will be significantly narrowed to several hundred people, but the campaign broadcast in this way will ideally fit the definition of “targeted advertising”. This is a great way to get the necessary amount of traffic that is most interested in your store. If, after a certain period of time, you see that there are too few people who click on the ad, you can expand your audience by adding additional interests, such as Reading tags and others.
Targeting tools
There are many ways to gather the necessary audience. In fact, part of the success lies in approaching the promotion of a product or service correctly. A set of criteria for targeting, combined with the name and description of the advertisement, can give the best effect in the form of generating a significant number of sales and, as a result, high profit.
In addition to the age, gender and interests already indicated, people who will see your ad can be selected according to other criteria. For example, this is a family status in which a person is currently living; educational institution in which he studied or is currently; place of work or service in the army; native language of a person. In addition to these and other nuances, it should also be added that an ad can be made on the basis of a set of certain categories, rather than a single indicator. For example, you can refine your campaign so that the ad is shown not only to 20-year-olds, but to people aged 20 to 25 years. The settings for advertising on social networks are, in fact, quite flexible, which, undoubtedly, is a huge plus of the latter as platforms for promotion.
How to start your campaign?
Do you think that in order to start being advertised on Facebook, you need to sign contracts and contact advertising agencies? And no! A huge plus of this and other similar sites (Vkontakte, Mamba and many others) is that it’s very easy to start working on them as an advertiser! It is enough to have a registered account on this network and spend half an hour of time in order to figure it out.
Say briefly. First you need to create a campaign, name it, specify the main parameters (time and frequency of its launch, budget, category). Next, you need to create ads that will be broadcast as part of this campaign. The next step is the procedure when the targeted advertising is set up (this means that the criteria mentioned above are specified). No special knowledge is needed to conduct advertising on social networks. It is enough to have work experience, as well as general ideas about how a particular social network works with its partners. Both can be recognized through direct experimentation. By the way, you can start with small amounts - for $ 100 you can test several tactics for displaying ads at once and identify some patterns. Do not forget to analyze the statistics.
Gather feedback information
In general, speaking about the statistics in advertising campaigns on social networks, they should be called their most important component. Why, you ask? The fact is that it is on the basis of statistics that the advertiser can improve the model by which he builds his advertising campaign. Only using specific numbers that indicate sales, the number of clicks on an advertising link, the percentage of conversions (the ratio of people who visited the product page and those who made a purchase), as well as other parameters, can an ad be successful. And the rest is up to experiments. You can, for example, create dozens of ads, collect statistics about them, identify the most successful ones and remove those that have failed. Actually, such a simple strategy is the most effective, although it certainly requires certain monetary investments at the stage of experiments.
Alternative to social networks
Social networks are a great way to promote a product. True, he works mainly for the entertainment sector and some services. Sell pumps for compressors, for example, through Facebook will not work, because it is too specialized niche. Here contextual and targeted advertising will come to the rescue.
In fact, it can be called an alternative to social networks, because it is placed either on search engines directly in the issuance of Google or Yandex, or on sites that are connected to the affiliate program of these advertising platforms. Let's say some catalog of spare parts puts in ads from Google Adsense, and you order ads and use the Adwords platform to manage this campaign by advertising your store.
The difference with social networks is "obvious". If there targeted advertising is the interests, age, gender and other characteristics of a particular person, then in the case of the "context", the link is made to the requests that a person makes in a search engine. For example, if he drives in the phrase “buy spare parts for viburnum”, an ad will appear in the issue with a link to the store with spare parts for “Lada Kalina”. This presentation of information, of course, is also narrowly targeted and effective in terms of sales.
So, targeted advertising is a real mechanism for promoting goods and services. This is a rejection of the usual model of offering our services to the widest possible audience, which is familiar to us from the old days (remember the joke with the announcement “selling garage” on the air “Field of Miracles”). In fact, advertising should be as specific as possible, it should be conveyed exclusively to those whom it may interest. Consequently, the most affordable tool that can now provide sufficient targeting is the Internet. And of course, targeted advertising itself is an excellent channel for organizing sales of your goods and services. The main thing is to be able to use it.