Apply targeting — and your advertising will be effective

For digital advertising, targeting is one of the most effective tools. It helps single out from among the entire audience only the interested consumers and show ads of products to such consumers only. This results in budget savings since ads are not shown to those who do not need a particular product or service.

The purpose of targeting is clear. Yet, the mechanism itself is not so simple. To date, there are over 5,000 different kinds of targeting available in digital advertising. Apart from the "classic" targeting such as targeting by gender, age, and income, there are very narrow kinds of targeting: by symptoms of a disease, focused on the owners of certain car models, specific professions, for example, logistics expert.

However, advertising will not be effective if many kinds of targeting are used simultaneously. The most important thing here is to select a mechanism and set it up correctly. It is the same in targeting as in any gadget: of all the settings offered, you connect only those that are useful.

I WILL USE A SIMPLE EXAMPLE TO EXPLAIN HOW TARGETING WORKS IN ADVERTISING.

Suppose your target audience were women aged 25 to 45 years with children. Your brand is wholesome snacks mothers buy for their children and less often for themselves. At first glance, it would make sense to use three kinds of targeting when setting up an advertising campaign: gender — women, age — 25 to 45 years, and parental status — with children.

The first two kinds of targeting, as a rule, are free, but you will have to pay where it comes to women with children: from 50% to 100% of the placement cost. When looking at the statistics, we can see that 7 out of 10 women aged 25 to 45 years have children. But women sometimes buy these snacks for themselves too. Thus, it would be pointless to pay 1.5 to 2 times more for placement to particularly find women who have children.

Therefore, for this media campaign, one should only use targeting by gender and age. This is an example of correct targeting management. It is a simple example.

Now let's make it more complex. For instance, by applying the following conditions:

CAN YOU USE TARGETING TO FIND AUDIENCE IN DIGITAL WHO HAS BEEN VISITING PARTICULAR PLACES OFFLINE? OR IS IT POSSIBLE TO SET UP A CAMPAIGN IN SUCH A WAY THAT AN ADVERTISEMENT OF A PRODUCT OR SERVICE COULD ONLY BE SEEN BY THOSE WHO WANT TO BUY A PRODUCT FROM OUR BRAND CATEGORY RIGHT NOW?

From questions — to practice. Is targeting effective for handling non-standard business tasks — let's analyze three different clients by using examples from real life.

Example 1.

"In search of entertainment"

CLIENT: Movie theatre network.

TASK: increase the number of new visitors to a movie theatre network by enticing the audience from the competitors.

SITUATION:

20% of clients of all movie theatres generate 80% of revenue in this category. These are so-called hard users who go to the movies regularly (4 to 6 times a year) or very regularly (4 to 6 times a month). So, the main task is not to search for movie-goers. Here you need to find hard users of other movie theatres. And persuade them to come to a movie theatre of our brand. Ideally, the task would be to encourage clients of other movie theatres to choose our movie theatre to visit it regularly.

SOLUTION:

We use the location lensing technology to channel our advertising to people who go to other movie theatres. This mechanism will make it possible to determine and "capture" mobile phone IDs of users who have been going to a competitor movie theatre. Then, using the sequential communication chain, we can show the same user a set of creative ideas from our movie theatre, starting with an image message and ending with promo messages such as: "Buy one ticket in our movie theatre and get the second one as a gift!"

Example 2.

"In search of coolness"

CLIENT: Manufacturer of air-conditioners.

TASK: Increase the sales of air-conditioners in the summer season.

CONDITIONS:

The climate control equipment category is usually characterized by one-time purchase and a small target audience — on average, air-conditioners are bought by no more than 500,000 people annually.

Therefore, it would make no sense to launch broad-reach campaigns, even in the hot summer season. 90% of consumers will not need an air-conditioner — they will ignore our advertising. It will only be seen by those who have ventured into making the purchase. Moreover, 7 out of 10 consumers will make up their minds about the brand just before the purchase.

The algorithm is approximately like this: search (1 to 3 weeks) — selection (1 to 24 hours) — search for a better price (30 minutes) — quick purchase (10 minutes). Thus, the most important thing about an advertising campaign is to know the exact time when the audience is interested in making a purchase, so that you definitely get short-listed by a potential buyer at the stage of selection.

SOLUTION:

We channel the advertising to custom audiences. In other words, we choose and show the ads only to those who, for instance, have visited the "climate control equipment" section on the websites of household appliance stores. Or we "target" the users who searched for air-conditioners on Google. Thus, within a period of 1 to 3 weeks, we will manage to show our ad frequently enough for the client to short-list our air-conditioner brand.

Example 3.

"In search of answers"

CLIENT: Network of private medical laboratories.

TASK: Increase sales of the test for detecting a possible fetal pathology in the first trimester of pregnancy.

CONDITIONS:

A network of medical clinics offers an additional test for women in the 1st trimester of pregnancy to exclude possible fetal diseases and pathologies. The test is optional and, therefore, this information should be communicated through advertising. The main challenge here is this: how to find women in the 1st trimester of pregnancy in digital?

SOLUTION:

We use the clinic's client base to search for a similar audience on the Internet and channel the advertisement to it. The network of clinics provides email addresses and phone numbers from its client base, specifically — women in the 1st trimester who underwent the test in question. By uploading the data to Facebook or Google, we can find the look-alike audience. That is an audience that is as similar as possible in terms of interests and behaviour according to the online consumption principle. Having placed the ad to target the lookalike audience, we are very likely to find new clients for our laboratory — women in the 1st trimester of pregnancy who may be interested in this test.

What are the conclusions?

Currently, the targeting technology has practically no technical constraints. However, it is most important to have effective rather than the largest set of tools. The individual and correct approach to the client will help accomplish his most complex business tasks.