In our 9 Practical Business Marketing Tips You Can Apply Today series, we’re giving you one quality marketing tip every day for two weeks and showing you how to apply it step-by-step. Today, we’ll talk about tip #5, running targeting advertising campaigns.
1. What is a targeted advertising campaign?
A targeted advertising campaign is a series of messages directed at specific audiences to get them to purchase your products or learn more about your services. The possibilities for targeting are almost endless because you can customize the messages that different people received based on their prior engagement with your website. This means that you can offer more specialized advertising to someone who, for example, has visited your events page, while also using a more general advertisement for people who have not yet heard of your company. You can also use engagement with your social media accounts as a differentiator.
2. Why is running a targeting advertising campaign a good marketing tip?
Targeted advertising is key because it meets your customers right where they are. Are they brand new to your company? You’ve got an ad that introduces them to you. Do they seem more interested in events than ebooks? You can tailor your advertising there.
Targeted advertising allows you to guide your customer to the next step at the appropriate time. It prevents confusion on the customers’ end because it never gets ahead of their expressed interests. It allows you to send custom messages to different users – who will notice the extra effort you are taking to meet their needs. This makes them more likely to eventually purchase because it establishes trust.
3. How can you apply this tip today?
1. Define your target audience
You can’t customize targeted advertising campaigns unless you know the audience you are aiming for! To define your target audience, think about a specific action you would like your audience to take. Purchase an ebook? Sign up for a subscription? Give them your email address?
Work backward from there. Think about demographics like:
- Location
- Language
- Age
- Career
- Gender
- Stage of life
Also, consider their past engagement with your company. Have they…
- liked your Facebook page?
- visited your website?
- followed you on Instagram?
- purchased from you before?
- been to different pages of your website?
- sent you a DM?
You will quickly see that you have several audiences that you want to target! And that’s the point and where customization comes into play. However, start with a single audience. After you have one, you’ll be able to see where you can customize a lot more easily than if you try to tackle several at once.
2. Create a lead generator
A lead generator is usually a free e-product that introduces people to the type of work that you do without giving all the goods. Lead generators can be things like short ebooks, checklists, and newsletters. They must be useful and valuable for the customers to want more.
Lead generators are great for first-contact advertising because they offer a free, no-obligation product. Use this in your initial advertisements. Then, when a potential customer downloads a lead generator, they will be funneled to the next step in your advertising. You will advertise something different at this point – perhaps one of your paid services or events.
3. Get in the habit of flexibility
Advertising requires a consistent watch over how your targeted advertising campaigns are performing to make sure that they are doing well. Not all of your campaigns will perform identically – watch for the ones that do particularly well and figure out what worked with them. If something isn’t performing, think through how you can improve it.
The central idea here is that advertising campaigns are an ongoing process – they’re not a one-and-done deal because customers are always evolving, and, ideally, your company is as well. Creating successful targeted advertising campaigns does take a bit of finesse, and Soulheart offers customized social ad services if you’d like to spend less time analyzing statistics and more time building the company you love.
© Joshua Brown 2019, all rights reserved
