Targeted advertising is ... Targeted advertising in social networks

It's no secret that the most relevant characteristic of the quality of advertising is its thematicity. Roughly speaking, we are talking about the correspondence of materials that call for the purchase of a particular product and service, with the interests of those people whom they are shown. For example, to advertise networks for fishing you need 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 the target, because it is intended only for the audience that is interested in showing the ad and in obtaining the advertised product or service.

How this interest manifests itself can be traced from our example with fishermen. If a person really has a need to purchase 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, which are conducted by almost all companies in any business, you can see that the 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 the product is most appreciated.

Where is this type of advertising used?

In fact, the scope of this type of advertising - an unlimited number. You can start, for example, with placing ads with the services of a lawyer near the courthouse (as the most fuzzy targeting) and end with contextual advertising on the Internet, which is shown on thematic sites (where the selection of materials is seen by the user right up to his browser version). You can see examples of targeting everywhere, and, in fact, almost everywhere such a format of promotion and dialogue with the client can be confidently called the most effective.

Yes, this is not the easiest way to deliver information to a client - targeted advertising. The cost of promoting products in this way is much higher than the prices for advertising services of wide coverage - one that appeals to many segments of the population, representatives of age and social groups (a vivid example is the traditional bigboards located throughout the city). However, as already noted, sales statistics justify the costs that go into this format of promotion.

Targeted advertising in social networks

Relatively recently (over the last 5-7 years), advertising on the Internet has become extremely popular, and with it - and targeting with the help of social networks. Naturally, the pioneer in this sphere was the Facebook company, which showed how narrowly the advertiser can set the framework of an audience that will see his materials. Setting up targeted ads on social networks allows you to clearly identify user groups, given their age, gender, place of residence, and even personal interests. For example, you can show your ad to those who read a specific author, is in a group dedicated to a sports game, or likes to watch a certain genre of films. Agree, with a set of such characteristics that social networks have for each user, the possibilities of advertising targeting are simply unlimited.

Slightly about targeting opportunities

In order to understand how accurate such advertising can be, we suggest you familiarize yourself with the example. So you clearly understand that targeted advertising is a real key to the success of advertisers.

Imagine that you need to increase sales of a bookshop located in a particular city. You just 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 (let it be Facebook). So, it's enough to compose the title and text of the announcement, pick up a picture, and then specify a specific group of people: it should be the inhabitants of your city (this is obvious), and also the amateurs read (for sure these are those who have the interests indicated in the "Books"). So the circle of your audience will be significantly narrowed to a few 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 as much as possible interested in your store. If you see after a certain period of time that the people who clicked on the ad are too few - you can expand the audience by adding additional interests, such as "Reading" tags and others.

Tools for targeting

Ways to gather the necessary audience a lot. In fact, part of the success is to approach the promotion of the 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 amount of sales and, as a result, high profits.

In addition to the age, gender and interests already mentioned, people who see your ad can be selected according to other criteria. For example, this is the family status in which a person is present at the moment; The educational institution in which he studied or is currently studying; Place of work or service in the army; The mother tongue of man. In addition to these and other nuances, it should also be added that the announcement can be made based on 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 of advertising on social networks are, in fact, quite flexible, which is undoubtedly a huge plus of the latter as sites for promotion.

How do I start my campaign?

Do you think that to start advertising on Facebook, you need to sign contracts and apply to advertising agencies? And here not! A huge advantage of this and other similar sites ("Vkontakte", "Mamba" and a lot of others) is that it is very easy to start working for 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 all out.

Let's say in brief. 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 compose ads that will be broadcasted within this campaign. The next step is the procedure, when the targeted advertising is configured (this means, the criteria specified above are specified). There is no need for any special knowledge to conduct advertising activities in social networks. It is enough to have work experience, as well as a general idea of how a particular social network works with its partners. Both can be recognized through direct experiments. To begin, by the way, it is possible from small sums - for 100 $ it is possible to test at once several tactics of display of announcements and to reveal some laws. Do not forget to analyze the statistics.

Collecting information about responses

In general, speaking about the statistical data in advertising campaigns on social networks, one should name 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 with the help of specific figures that indicate sales, the number of conversions on the advertising link, the percentage of conversions (the ratio of people who visited the product page and those who made the purchase), as well as other parameters, can make the announcement successful. And the rest is about 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 requires, undoubtedly, certain monetary investments at the stage of experiments.

Alternative social network

Social networks are a great way to promote a product. True, he works primarily for the entertainment and some services. Sell pumps for compressors, for example, through Facebook will not work, because this 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. We will tell, any spare parts catalog puts ads from Google Adsense, and you order advertising and by means of platform Adwords operate this campaign, advertising the shop.

The difference with social networks is "obvious". If there targeted advertising is interests, age, gender and other characteristics of a particular person, then in the case of "context", the binding is made to the queries that the person makes in the search engine. For example, if he drives the phrase "to buy spare parts for Kalina", an announcement will appear in the issue with reference to the store with spare parts for "Lada Kalina". Such a submission of information, of course, is also highly focused 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 for us from the old times to offer our services to the widest possible audience (remember the anecdote with the announcement "sell garage" on the air of "Field of Miracles"). In fact, advertising should be as point-based as possible, it should be reported only to those it may be interested in. Therefore, the most accessible tool that can now provide targeting at a sufficient level is the Internet. And of course, the targeted advertising itself is an excellent channel for organizing sales of its goods and services. The main thing is to be able to use it.