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A properly targeted advertisement is one key thing to bring repeat business to your brand or company. What makes a targeted ad special? Basically, it uses specially crafted text and imagery to appeal to a hypothetical person–an avatar composed of your audience’s demographics and interests–instead of a general audience. Tailoring your ads to your target customers makes them feel understood and valued as an individual, which can turn them into a customer for life.
And that’s what more small businesses need in the digital age.
Putting together a targeted ad takes hard work and a little trial and error. Until you get the hang of things, it can feel like a waste of time and money.
But with a little practice and perseverance, you can make your ads work smarter. Once you know what you’re doing, where you want to go, and who you want to bring in, you’ll reap the rewards of your hard work. To start, here are some questions you should ask about your current digital ad campaigns.
Are You Getting a Reasonable Bang for Your Buck?
Expensive doesn’t always mean effective. Your targeted ads should make a return on your spent time and resources. Are people actually making it through the sales funnel to make a purchase? Or, if you’re trying to get more newsletter subscribers, are you meeting your benchmark goals?
You can test this out now on your most recent marketing campaign using this how-to calculate ROAS guide. Learning how an advertising mistake skews your numbers is a big part of building a successful ad campaign!
Have You Targeted the Right People, or Everyone?
Contacting as many potential customers as possible seems like a good idea–at first. Cast a wide net to trawl up as many fish as possible! Nothing could go wrong, right?
Wrong. Trying to appeal to too broad an audience dampens your message. Creating a targeted ad with absolutely everyone in mind is much harder than shaping it around your typical or ideal customer.
To start, cut things down and focus on some main demographics:
- Age group
- Gender identity
- Physical location
- Lifestyle interests
- Income range
Once you’ve locked these down, move into more complex targeting. Get some practice in, cast a smaller net, then move outward.
How Do Customers Move Through Your Website?
Finally, when you do snag a customer, how do they behave on your website? You should be able to see this in your analytics. What do users click on? How many visitors click on the same thing? Look for patterns to inform your strategy.
Answering these questions will help you discover how your customers think through making purchases. You’ll learn what they want to see before checkout. In turn, you can pinpoint and refine the ads that brought people to you in the first place.
By learning how to effectively guide your audience on that journey through targeted ads, you’ll you achieve the success and results you want a lot sooner than if you keep trying to reach everyone the same way.
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