Targeted advertising is adverts of various types (text, photo, video) in social networks. The peculiarity of targeted advertising is that it is shown to users who meet the specified characteristics. Targeting is aimed at encouraging the user to follow the link to the site, leave contact details, make a purchase, etc.
Together with Arabesco Sideral's experts, we looked at the reasons why adverts don't live up to your expectations.
How targeting works
Often entrepreneurs complain that targeting doesn't produce the desired results. To find the reasons for this, you need to understand how it works.
The process starts with setting up an advert. You specify the budget of the advertising campaign and the characteristics of the target audience: gender, age, geographical location, interests, etc.
Next comes the demonstration of the advert. The user should see your advert and pay attention to it.
Then it is necessary that the user not only sees your advert in their feed, but also studies it. Therefore, you should not think that if the statistics show a thousand impressions, then all these people have read the text of the advert or viewed the photo/video.
If the advert has interested a person, the next step is to follow the link that is indicated in the advert.
Next, the person explores your website or social media page.
The final step is to perform the target action: leave an application, subscribe to the page, register on the site, place an order, etc.
What problems there may be at each stage
There can be many - hundreds - of reasons why targeted advertising is ineffective. Here are some of them at each of the stages.
Ad impressions. Due to incorrect settings, the advert may be shown too little or not at all. In addition, it may appear in the feed of representatives of non-target audience.
Viewing by the user. Why a person may not pay attention to your ad? Uninteresting, unattractive creative does not attract attention. Because of this, the person just skimmed through it.
Studying/reading the advert. Let's say a person is interested in your creative: a bright picture, an interesting video or a loud headline. He unfolded the post, viewed it, and left. The problem may be that the creative attracts attention, but the content of the ad does not interest the user. Possible reasons are the lack of a unique selling proposition or a poorly crafted offer.
Click-through rate. Low clickability can be related to the quality of the creative or its demonstration to a non-target audience. Another possible reason is a call for a complex target action. You should not immediately offer to make an expensive purchase. Let this action be, let's say, ‘Explore terms of cooperation’ or ‘View all options’.
Study the advertiser's profile/site. A person was interested in the advert, he opened your profile or social network page, but he was not interested in it. The problem may lie in the content of the profile. For example, the person did not find something to subscribe for, did not see the value of the profile for himself. Perhaps the user's expectations did not coincide with reality. It is necessary to analyse how interesting the profile is, how relevant content is presented in it, etc.
Target action fulfilment. There is a transition to the profile, there is a subscription, but there are no orders. The problem may be at the marketing or product level. For example, a person is simply not satisfied with the price.
In the case of website conversions, the reason may be technical problems. If your online shop takes a long time to load, a person will simply not wait and will leave. Also, your site may be unattractive or incomprehensible to the user. In addition, the user will leave if he does not find the information he needs.
You may have targeted the wrong action. For example, a person does not want to call on the phone, and wants to write in messenger, and you do not have this option. In case the target action is to register on the site, a person may be repelled by the large number of fields that need to be filled out.
If you think that targeted advertising does not give the desired effect, then you need to look for at which stage problems arise. To do this, you must have a good understanding of the whole picture of the sales funnel. Analyse each step: launching ads, showing them to users, reach, link clicks, etc. Then you will understand what needs to be fixed to get better results.