Contents
- What is targeting?
- Goals of targeting
- How does targeting work?
- Types of targeting
- Where targeting is applied
What is targeting?
Targeting is a powerful tool of digital marketing that helps find the target audience online based on specific criteria. This mechanism ensures the creation of relevant advertisements for various user segments, which in turn contributes to increasing the conversion of advertisements. For example, in the social network "VKontakte," targeting can be set based on location, age, and interests to accurately reach the target audience.
Goals of targeting
Targeting has several key goals, including:
- Increasing conversion: Advertising shown to everyone is unlikely to yield the desired results. For instance, there is no point in offering children's products to people without children, as they will not be interested in purchasing.
- Reducing promotional costs: Low conversion leads to increased advertising expenses. Thus, when paying for impressions, ads may be shown to non-target users, which raises costs.
- Attracting new customers: Targeting helps expand the audience by allowing you to inform those who are not yet aware of your brand but fit the characteristics of the target customer.
- Increasing brand awareness: With targeted advertising, you can create a system of multiple touchpoints with potential customers, which increases the likelihood of your brand being remembered.
- Personalizing communication: Targeting allows for the adaptation of advertising messages to the needs and interests of narrow audience segments.
How does targeting work?
The basis of the targeting mechanism is the collection of data about users. This process is carried out through the information that people leave on social networks, apps, and other services, as well as through cookies. When a user views a specific product on a website, the browser sends this data to advertising networks. For example, if a person showed interest in a sofa, they might see an advertisement for that sofa in their "VKontakte" feed.
Advertising networks receive extensive data on user behavior: which pages they visit, how much time they spend on the site, what content they are interested in, etc. This allows brands to set up targeting for specific audiences using relevant parameters when creating advertisements.
In the targeting process, three main stages are distinguished:
- Audience segmentation: Dividing customers into categories based on various criteria (demographic, geographic, and behavioral) to create personalized ads.
- Analysis and selection of segments: Analyzing customer profiles and allocating the advertising budget based on the potential profit of each segment.
- Positioning: Developing advertising messages and creatives for each group of target audience.
Types of targeting
There are several types of targeting that can be used in digital marketing:
- Socio-demographic: Covers age, gender, relationship status, and other demographic characteristics.
- Geographic: Based on the audience's location, allowing targeting of users in specific cities or countries.
- Behavioral: Based on user interests, determined by their online behavior.
- Contextual: Uses keywords entered by users in search engines.
- Topical: Places advertisements on websites of relevant themes.
- Device targeting: Allows selecting devices and operating systems used by the target audience.
- Retargeting: Shows advertisements to users who have already interacted with your brand.
Where targeting is applied
Targeting finds its application in various areas of digital marketing. Search engines like Yandex and Google use contextual targeting, showing ads based on user queries. Social networks also offer a variety of targeting options, including behavioral and geographic.
Display advertising allows for the application of almost all types of targeting, while streaming services can set up audio ads based on socio-demographic indicators and geolocation. Thus, targeting becomes an important tool for achieving marketing goals and optimizing advertising expenses.