How to attract customers with targeted advertising?

Let’s start with what targeted advertising is?

Let’s take a closer look at where we can use it:

• Social networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networks offer targeted advertising opportunities based on interests, demographics, behavioral data, and other parameters.
• Search engines: Google Ads and Yandex.Direct provide targeted advertising opportunities based on keywords, location, and other parameters.
• Mobile apps: mobile apps can display targeted ads based on behavioral data, location, and other parameters.
• Websites and blogs: many websites and blogs use ad networks like Google AdSense to show targeted ads based on site content and user interests.
• Email: targeted advertising can be sent in emails based on interests, demographics, and other parameters.
• Video hosting: YouTube and other video hosting platforms offer targeted advertising opportunities based on user interests and behavioral data.

This is not a complete list of places where you can encounter targeted advertising, but these are some of the most common.

For all of this to work correctly, we need to properly set up the advertising cabinet. It allows advertisers to more accurately configure their ads to reach their target audience and achieve the best return on their advertising investment. Below is the structure of the advertising cabinet.

Fig. 1. – Schematic structure of the advertising cabinet.

Let’s break it down in more detail. At the top level, there is one advertising campaign. On the next level, we have ad groups and then ad posts. Why such a structure? Because we can configure each stage separately without reformatting others. At the campaign level, the goal is set. In simple terms, we ask the system to show ads to people who, for example, are interested in football, games, or design, etc. That is, depending on the goal of the advertising campaign we choose, the system will look for such people.

If we have a small budget but need as many people as possible to learn about our company, product, or event, we need to use brand awareness campaigns (Brand Awareness).

If we want customers to go directly to the website, then we need the goal – traffic (Reach).

In case we need people to share the post, comment, like, or subscribe to the newsletter, the goal is engagement (Engagement).

Lead generation is a great goal when we need to collect contacts of potential clients.

There are also other goals that you can familiarize yourself with in the advertising cabinet itself.

Next, we move down to the ad sets. This is directly what helps us find our users who need our products and services. The main parameters for searching are: geo, age, gender, interests, placement, budget.

Tip! Never mix audiences, interests, and demographic characteristics, as it will be very difficult to analyze the data obtained later.

Geo, age, gender, and interests are clear. But what is placement? It is where we will be “shown,” for example, Facebook feed, Instagram feed, stories, showing on native partner sites.

At this level, we set the time for the campaign, for the entire campaign, for a day, etc.

The next level is advertising ads. This is essentially what our audience sees. Usually, it consists of two parts: creative and text.

After you have done everything and filled it out, you launch the advertising campaign.

Cold and warm traffic

Remember! We must always separate cold and warm traffic.

Cold traffic refers to those people who have not interacted with you, who do not know about you, and have never heard of your company or product before. Audiences are gathered based on interests and demographic characteristics.

Warm traffic refers to those people who already know you and have interacted before. These could be your customers.

Therefore, it is recommended for all businesses to carefully collect their contacts.

Below are the diagrams of the campaign structure for working with warm/cold traffic.

Fig. 3. – Campaign structure for working with warm traffic

Fig. 4. – Campaign structure for working with cold traffic

Why is targeted advertising useful for business?

Targeted advertising is beneficial for businesses for several reasons:

Budget savings. Since the ads we target are shown only to the target audience that is most likely to take the desired action (for example, purchasing a product/service), this reduces advertising costs and improves campaign effectiveness.

Increased conversion. Ads aimed at a specific audience are more likely to elicit a response from users than ads shown to random people. This increases the chances of attracting new customers and boosting sales.

Improved branding. Targeted advertising allows for more precise ad placement according to the interests and needs of the target audience, enhancing the user’s perception of the brand.

Analytics and optimization. Targeted advertising usually includes analytics and tracking capabilities, allowing for campaign optimization and improved effectiveness over time.

So, if you want to find your audience and grab their attention, use targeting for promotion.

To dive deeper into the topic, you have the opportunity to check out the report in video format with answers to questions.