How Can Agencies Win Big With Targeted Advertising

Do you know what differentiates targeted advertising from generic advertising and makes it so effective? It’s the holy trinity of the following three elements that targeted advertising is based on, and it makes all the difference.

• Specific Traits of the Individuals
• Their Interests, Desires, and Needs
• Shopping & Browsing Behavior

Marketers use consumer data to segment their customers according to these three factors.

What Is Targeted Advertising?

Targeted advertising is an online strategy focusing on a customer’s specific traits, interests, and preferences. Marketers constantly need to track their online activities to dig into this information.

Target advertising helps brands cut through the noise the Internet is so full of. People are more likely to engage with personalized ads rather than generic ad messaging as they are bombarded with random ads everywhere.

Retargeting can further boost its overall impact. It takes ads personalization to a whole new level and helps if you push the prospect down the sales funnel by reminding him about the product pages that he had visited on your website.

Benefits of Targeted Advertising

Ad personalization has a deep impact on customer acquisition and retention. It improves the click-through rate (CTR) and customer lifetime value (CLV).

Additionally, target advertising enables marketers to send customized messages to different individuals based on the information collected about each customer. Your brand’s effectiveness lies in its ability to craft custom messages for its customers as per the information per its understanding and knowledge of its customers’ needs and wants.

The chances of customers responding to advertisements and engaging with a brand drastically increase with custom advertisements.

According to research, 71% of customers prefer personalized advertisements. The study further reveals that 44% of customers become repeat customers with ad personalization.

Tips for Using Targeted Advertising for Digital Agencies

Agencies should ensure that their paid advertising campaigns achieve a high ROI. It is crucial for the acquisition and retention of customers as the agency business is already striving to sustain with increased competition. Many companies opt out of paid ads when they get poor or no results from paid advertising.

However, paid ads can be extremely effective, provided you avoid poor targeting and irrelevant ads. New and upgraded ad-targeting features of platforms like Facebook and Instagram help businesses effectively reach their target audiences.

Here are some tips for implementing targeted advertising for maximum impact –

1. Avoid Irrelevant and Generic Ads

Marketers make the grave mistake of filling a customer’s browser with irrelevant ads that are randomly displayed, and it hurts the brand’s reputation. In an age where artificial intelligence is everywhere, random ads may damage your prospects rather than boost them. You should ensure that your ads are not generic or badly placed.

Generic ads are created to promote commodities in general. Here is an example –

Image Source: Berkeley University

As it's obvious, these ads are not so effective or engaging.

2. Pay Attention to Ad Placement

Here are a few ads that ended up looking funny because of their bad placement.

For example, see this ad mentioned in Reddit chats:

Image source: Reddit

The “Adult Video” ad is overshadowed by the “Jesus Is Watching” billboard. Both ads have different intentions and messaging, but their placement makes them horrible.

Similarly, look at Monster.com’s ad below. Its placement makes it too hilarious.

Image Source: Bored Panda

The headline “seven new jobs” announced by Monster unintentionally coincides with a Fox News headline, “seven shot at Florida nightclub.” It looks as if the seven new jobs will replace these seven dead persons.

3. Avoid Unintelligent and Poor Targeting

Another problem with targeted ads is that sometimes they become “badly targeted” ads. The agencies should be watchful of these mistakes. Sometimes, the algorithms are responsible for such errors, but most of the time, marketers can avoid them by being mindful and alert.

See how every baby boomer is targeted with crypto, investment and mutual funds ads, even though they might not be interested in these things. It makes these “targeted ads” so annoying.

Similarly, lacking information about your audience can be a recipe for disaster for targeted advertising.

And this one, where a young person receives an ad for shoes meant for older adults.

And how can you even dub someone "broken" without sufficient information about them?

Poor targeting can annoy customers and leave them disinterested and confused. It's an utter waste of your marketing dollars.

4. Try Automated Targeted Advertising

Facebook introduced automated lookalike audiences to save hundreds of hours for marketers. Since Facebook is armed with a larger database of people and advanced automation tools and algorithms, the “lookalike” audience became an instant game-changer.

With these automation techniques, you can quickly reach your target audience more than anything else. So, why not make good use of it?

5. Keep Track of the Federal and State Data Privacy Laws

Last but not least, marketers should keep tabs on federal and state privacy laws around consumer data. People in the US and Europe are waking up to consumer data privacy laws.

Some of the annoyed customers even sue the brands for violating consumer data privacy laws. So, if someone opts out of automated profiling, you should respect it and not include them in your targeted audience.

Final Words

The digital marketing ecosystem is expanding like galaxies, and you can see ads everywhere. People are so used to seeing ads that they either turn a blind eye to them or eagerly wait to locate the cross or "skip ad" button as soon as an unwanted ad appears. It's also counterproductive for brands, as they waste thousands of dollars to display these ads to the wrong audiences.

So, they should serve the targeted ads with personalized content, keeping their needs and desires in mind. Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram offer amazing audience targeting features to engage with your prospects and existing customers. If you need strategic guidance, contact the DashClicks team.