Ad targeting guide for beginners
The time when marketers tried to reach everyone has passed, and now we are in the era of target marketing. Targeting is the most powerful weapon in the hands of marketers, no matter how different the thing they are marketing for.
And targeting in advertising campaigns has become the only factor that can differentiate between good effective marketing and bad marketing.
Although targeting is a word that may seem confusing to many, I promise you, dear reader, that once you have finished this article, you will possess the basics of the skill of targeting in advertising campaigns.
You will also be familiar with all aspects of the process from market segmentation, understanding the ideal buyer persona, to targeting methods and techniques.
What does targeting mean in targeted ad campaigns?
Targeting in advertising campaigns means that the e-marketer concentrates and intensifies all the marketing efforts for the category that really cares about what you offer, thus making less effort to get many times greater marketing returns.
That's it in a nutshell, but as Americans say, just the tip of the iceberg (that's the tip of the iceberg), targeting is a delicate process that requires many pre-existing plus several follow-up steps that determine the success of an advertising campaign from its failure.
If you do not think that targeting in advertising campaigns is important, then you should read these two studies:
1. According to Marketing Evolution, $37 billion is spent on frivolous marketing campaigns that are unable to target or interact with their target audience, and thus do not achieve the desired results or achieve no results at all.
2. According to an article on MarketingWeek. About 47% of ad campaigns in the UK fail to target the right audience, so they also don't get the desired results.
Although targeting in advertising campaigns does not have a magic formula that proves its success every time, there are a number of questions that will help you find the audience that you will target.
These questions are the epitome of digital marketing genius Neil Patel, whose blog generates more than 20 million visitors each month thanks to a complex targeting process.
1. Who are your target audience?
Using market segmentation, you will focus on a number of categories that are likely to bring you the most profit, and since we are in the age of social media and Google, from the very beginning you will have an idea of who is following and interested in what you have to offer.
The easiest way to do this is to follow followers, likes, top posts and comments on your content on different social media platforms, and by knowing these groups well and targeting them you can motivate them to buy your products or services or even follow your content according to your marketing objective.
2. What are the most important difficulties, problems and desires of this target audience?
Knowing the problems and difficulties faced by the target audience is your path to success and your plan to make your customers happy and satisfied with your services.
Putting yourself in your audience’s shoes or, in the words of Neil Patel, “putting yourself in their shoes” is the most successful way to understand them and their needs, and thus fill that void in the market and beat the rest of the competitors… it will make you swallow up this market or that niche.
3. Where does your target audience get their information from the Internet?
Everyone needs information. We are a generation that consumes content. Rather, according to scientists, a generation is addicted to content, and there are thousands of information that our minds are exposed to every day that contribute to shaping our ways of thinking, and as an electronic marketer, you have to know what the sources of your target audience’s answer are.
This will allow you to be able to read their thoughts and get your marketing message across in their language that they understand well, which will cause them to be very attracted to your products or services and buy them without thinking.
4. What real benefit do you offer to your target audience?
The majority of advertising campaigns fail to target the desired audience because they lack value, whatever the quality of your product or services, without expanding the links between your product or services and customer needs and problems, you will not get any reaction or interaction.
See things from their point of view, imagine that you need this product. What would make you buy it without dozens or hundreds of similar products?
What feature is available in it and not available in others? Does it have real value that you can understand? How will it affect your life and make it better and easier? What makes you tr is it?
The benefit or value is your way to beat hundreds of competitors, which will automatically make you try to improve your product and give more to beat the competitors.
5. What attracts your target audience negatively?
Thinking about the negatives will make you avoid many unwanted problems, it is a kind of learning without making mistakes.
If you answer this question efficiently, you will improve your marketing methods and the way you target your audience, which will prevent you from losing a customer or creating a negative image of them.
6. Who does your target audience trust?
Trust is the foundation upon which everything is built, this is well understood by Amazon and made them focus on the reviews section of their products, and the customer's trust in their sellers is unmatched by anything else.
You too, be like Amazon and try to build your target audience's trust the way you see fit, whether through offers, return and exchange guarantees, or customer testimonials.
Trust equals reputation, and in the world of marketing nothing is more important than reputation, and we often hear that there are people who simply put their name on a product that people buy without a second thought.
The importance of targeting in targeted ad campaigns
1. Achieving your marketing objective:
Increase sales, increase traffic...etc.
Targeting in advertising campaigns is a powerful tool to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, which helps you to achieve your marketing goal easily, but also to reach levels you never dreamed of before.
For example, instead of your ads reaching 10,000 people from whom only 100 people bought your product, your ad reached only 1,000 people, and 120 of them bought the product, so you spent much less on your campaign while making more sales.
This is not just limited to sales, but any marketing objective the company may need; From getting followers to getting information from them, because by targeting advertising campaigns, you can easily address interested customers who are ready to buy from you or connect with you.
2. Rapid growth and access to a larger market share
Good marketing is half the success, so targeting in advertising campaigns will make your project grow quickly because the customer or consumer will finally find a company or product that they treat and solve their problems.
If there is one thing marketers have learned from the Internet; Is that customers always love and respond to personalized content and advertising in an unprecedented way, so when you use targeting in ad campaigns - if your product is really good - you will grow faster than any competitor in the market.
3. Improve your product or service
Knowing your customers to this degree or putting yourself in their shoes “putting yourself in their shoes” will make you able to improve your product or service in a way that suits them most, which will necessarily achieve the goals you seek.
By getting to know your customers and putting yourself in their shoes, you will easily be able to become a distinctive mark in the market in which you are competing, which will be reflected in your customer reminding you of the quality they need most; Whether it's quality, customer service, competitive pricing, or whatever quality he needs most.
This will essentially make your product or service a brand in itself, which is what any marketer would want. Being a brand in the minds of your customers will take you to another level in sales or customer loyalty to you and your product or service.
4. Reducing the expenses of the marketing process
The targeting process is necessary for any marketer, as it will help him reduce the expenses of the marketing process to a minimum while maintaining the effectiveness of the marketing process, and even increasing it, due to targeting only interested customers. In the product or service without being uninterested.
5. Talk directly to your customers
Targeting interested customers and understanding what is on their minds will make your marketing messages appear as if they are answering the customer what he has in mind or directly addressing his problem, which will definitely affect his response to the marketing message and the advertising campaign as a whole.
This also gets to the point of personalized messaging or personalized marketing, where targeting will help you create a marketing message that addresses the customer - each customer - on an individual level.
Targeted advertising campaigns have a very important impact that some e-marketers ignore, which is identifying the content that customers like and want, which is exactly what makes it easier for the marketer to work and contribute to achieving his marketing goals.
It also helps in creating customized content that the customer loves, influences, and targets that will literally help you provide what your customers are looking for.
6. Reach more potential customers
Targeting advertising campaigns will help your marketing message reach as many people as possible who are interested in your product, or who are struggling with the problem your product or service solves.
Instead of an advertising campaign targeting 10,000 people, only 5,000 of whom are interested... You can launch an ad campaign targeting 10,000 people who are interested in what you offer, thus doubling the number of potential customers, and thus your sales and profits.
7. Create a kind of loyalty to your customers
You may have seen queues of Apple fans camped out in front of online stores months before the release of the new iPhone version and were stunned. Well, do not be surprised, this is what in the art of marketing is called customer loyalty, and it is an important function of every marketer or marketing team in any company.
Creating customer loyalty in the long-term end result of any marketing goals, and fortunately, targeting in advertising campaigns greatly helps to achieve this goal by associating the customer with the benefits that your product, service, or even your content provides.
Ad targeting and market segmentation
We can't talk about targeting a customer segment before we segment or segment the market. Marketing segmentation is the process of passing all the users in the market through several filters or filters based on various factors such as age, physical condition, education level…etc.
After this process is completed, the marketer will have a large number of customer segments from which to choose what suits his business according to profitability and ability, as we will talk about.
A large number of marketers believe that the STP (segmentation, targeting and presentation) model is suitable only for large companies or only those on the ground, but in fact, it is necessary for all types of businesses.
It cannot be dispensed with in relation to electronic business, or that uses means of communication, websites and e-mail as channels of communication with its customers.
For example, if you are an e-trainer, and you have a book on marketing that you want to sell; You don't have to write one book for all the different classes, including those who know nothing about marketing, including the average skilled, and the professional.
It is better to start with, analyze and study your followers and the market, then target a specific category, and move the category of medium-skilled marketers who want to turn professional.
Then you target them with a book and set an appropriate price for the value of that book and market it to them, but if you decide to create one book for all of these categories, you will lose a lot because you will not be able to. Convince them all, and thus you will lose many opportunities that were available to you.
Market segmentation
You can divide the market into 4 different aspects, namely:
1. side geographer
Geographical segmentation is appropriate for some types of business and involves segmenting customers by postal number, city, country, urban environment, climate, or even in some large companies according to the continent.
2. The demographic dimension
According to the demographic aspect, customers are divided according to several factors, including age, gender, income, family status, education, number of family members, religion, ethnicity, orientation, and activities.
3. The psychological aspect
Some companies that care about consumers and consumption have the most important section according to the psychological characteristics of customers. It is divided according to personality traits, attitudes towards specific topics, interests, lifestyles, beliefs, priorities and everything else within the scope of psychoanalysis.
4. Behavioral aspect
There are many companies and brands that prefer to play on the behavioral segmentation of their customers, as it is best suited to what they offer, and segmentation from the behavioral side includes buying and spending habits, brand loyalty, etc., and large companies usually target their customers through behavioral traits.
Choose the correct slide
The difficult task comes after conducting market research and market segmentation, which is to choose the right segment for you, which can achieve the most profits by targeting it, and marketing experts usually choose it according to five factors, namely:
1. Slide attraction
What is meant by the attractiveness of the segment here is the amount of expected profits that this segment will bring you, and certainly the focus is on the segments that will achieve the highest profits, but this is not the only factor as we will see.
2. The capabilities and resources of the service provider
The segment can be very profitable, but we will not be able to supply the products with the number and presence required to earn them and create loyalty to them, be it human or economic resources. Therefore, you should choose a category that is less profitable and more commensurate with the capabilities of the company, especially if you offer physical products and not services.
A shoe store owner and a freelance professional are equal here, but the approach to this factor is somewhat different. If you're the first, stress will be a huge problem, especially if you've frustrated your clients a few times.
But for FreeLancer, he can easily turn down new customers and focus on existing ones, and that's the sticking point around the nature of business and resources.
3. Homogeneity and excellence
Homogeneity and distinction here mean that this segment has similar or even close or common needs, in order to be able to target it with the same means and messages, and to be distinct, that is, it differs from the rest of the other segments. So we can focus on it.
4. Competition
The marketer must keep in mind the competition in the market, although competition is healthy and good for business, too much of it is a dangerous sign saying don't get close, that's why, if you find a segment crowded with competitors, you should move away a bit and choose a segment with fewer from competitors.
The most appropriate story to express this factor is the story of anti-dandruff shampoo. At first, these products were aimed only at women, but then Head & Shoulders thought to target another very profitable segment, the men segment, and to offer them anti-dandruff shampoo for men, so they were able to choose a very profitable target segment.
5. Response
The fifth and final factor is the response related to the previous factors, and it is the most important one because you have to choose a segment that responds to your marketing messages. If your company cannot influence and win over them, all previous efforts will be in vain.
Market segmentation benefits
There is no doubt that the process of segmenting the market has many benefits, especially if you are going to rely on e-marketing.
Among the most important of these benefits:
- Determine the best marketing methods and tactics with your customers.
- Design successful marketing campaigns with high returns.
- Create irresistible marketing messages from customers.
- Differentiate your product among all the products and brands in the market.
- Create high loyalty in your customers.
- Explore opportunities in the market.
- Focus all your marketing efforts thus maximizing success.
- Reduce risks.
Buyer character
Market segmentation is always associated with the so-called buyer personality, a concept that aims to create a model for the intended or target customer. At meetings between marketers, fictional characters are mentioned.
This method will make him interact more with and understand his customers, but it also requires effort by developing these personalities periodically to adapt to the environment and its changes.
According to Alison Bankow's case study; And this method contributed to increasing the traffic on his site by 900%, in addition to increasing the marketing returns by about 171%.
At the end of this point, I would like to clarify that the process of targeting market segments is not done through one segment only, but sometimes the marketer can choose a number of segments to work on, but it is preferable that these segments not be many, because this may distract you from your marketing messages and creation The marketing process is your failure par excellence.
Targeting in digital marketing
Targeting in advertising campaigns has become an indispensable necessity in digital marketing, especially with the many tools that these platforms provide to facilitate targeting and make it more effective.
Below we review some lessons specialized in targeting in some areas of e-marketing:
1. Targeting different social media
All social media provides a number of tools to segment and target your audience, and this is increasing over time because the business model of these media is mainly based on advertising money, and therefore they try to offer the best advantages to the e-marketers on it.
In the beginning, the e-marketer must study his audience well, and recognize the characteristics that distinguish them. For example, the dominant age group, the most common gender, the interests, the syllabus they follow, then do the same with his competitors to find out the best category to target.
Then comes the step of preparing the personality of the customer, where the marketer determines the number of characteristics and personal qualities that he wants to target, and then, of course, the targeting.
You will find many tools in every social media or even in other means that require paid subscriptions, but we will talk here on Facebook in particular as an example of targeting in social media advertising campaigns.
Facebook has a very powerful targeting tool called Audience Insights, this tool is magical because it allows you to precisely target the audience you want starting from specifying age, location, language, occupation, marital and emotional status and other demographic aspects.
In addition to demographic targeting, Facebook also allows you to target audiences based on their interests, those interests related to your business; If you are a coffee shop owner, you can target your audience by focusing on food and drink, especially coffee shops.
There is also more in-depth or more specialized targeting which allows you to target the audience by their job, the events they attend, education, the activities they do and the like.
Facebook is one of the most used advertising platforms, due to the great potential, it can provide you with, and its ability to achieve the marketing goal that you set when you start setting up your advertising campaign.
2. Targeting in Email Marketing Campaigns
Targeting in email marketing campaigns is very important and not many think it is useless, the popular Mailchimp platform says it opens 14% more emails and leads to 65% more clicks.
Of course, there are many ways to segment and target the audience of your marketing campaign, but in this article, I will discuss with you only the three most important:
1. Demographic targeting
This is the easiest and simplest way to target, which is based on targeting your audience using the information you already have about their age, gender, and marital status.
By demographic targeting of your email campaigns, you can do wonders, for example, if you sell clothes and target girls between the ages of 18-25 using new men's groups, you will generate absolutely amazing sales.
2. Geographical targeting
By identifying the areas in which they live, you can effectively achieve your marketing goals. For example, you can market your raincoats to the residents of Alexandria at a time when it is notorious for storms and storms.
Thus, you will achieve high sales compared to what will happen if you randomly target people from all governorates of Egypt
3. Previous dealings with your customers
Recording your interactions with customers is very important, as it will enable you to send products similar to what they have purchased from you, and it will also help you to send products that they pay for, which they may buy through what they have previously purchased.
In addition, by the dates of purchase, you will be able to realize that some of your customers buy on certain occasions so that you can market some products to them in advance to encourage them to buy from you.
3. Targeting in Google Ads and Affiliate Marketing
Google search engine has very powerful tools in targeting your audience, which you can use either in marketing your products or in affiliate marketing.
You can target the audience by:
The main words
- Keyword targeting is the primary and primary targeting key that Google provides to advertisers, with it you can target the audience searching on Google with specific keywords.
- Of course, this can be customized more precisely by placing more targeting options, also in the case of advertising through partner sites with Google, targeting through the following other factors.
- demographic aspects
You can attract audiences to your products and services based on information such as location, age, gender, type of device they are using, it is browsable.
Purchasing inclinations
As the owner of a product or service, you can target the audience who is looking for services or products similar to those you offer, and this will make them more likely to buy from you and hear information about your product or service.
similar audience
You can attract more buyers by targeting customers who have common interests with your existing customers and who are more likely to buy your products or services from you as well.
Remarketing
You can retarget people who are interested in your ads, whether on the site or the app, which will make them see your ads more and thus encourage them to visit you.