How one can establish your superb goal markets for paid campaigns

Many marketers believe that generating a lot of traffic to their website is the be-all and end-all of online marketing.

It is not so. Much more important is getting your target market right.

Your target market is the people you want to buy for your product or service. Some are existing customers while others may never have heard from you.

Isn't that the same as a demographic group?

Not quite.

Demographic data is actually subsets of a target market.

For example, the target market for car insurance could be "all car owners". However, your recent marketing campaign could focus on a specific segment of the population in this market, such as young drivers.

Why you need to identify your target market for paid advertising campaigns

An advertising campaign is only as strong as addressing the target group.

Continuing the example of car insurance, in an older audience social campaign, I would not use news and images for young drivers and bid on keywords like "car insurance for young drivers" if my target market were older drivers.

These are obvious examples; You don't have to be a professional marketer to avoid falling into these traps.

However, if you compromise your alignment even slightly, it can have costly consequences.

Keep the following in mind: The average cost per click (CPC) of a Google search ad is $ 2.69, although it's much higher in some industries.

If you're in the legal field, it costs an average of $ 675 to generate just 100 clicks. That's a lot of money for the wrong audience.

Target Markets - Average CPC for Google Ads

CPCs are a little cheaper on Facebook, but finance and insurance companies still pay an average of $ 377 for 100 clicks.

You cannot afford to throw this type of money away by reaching the wrong target market.

But there is more to it than that.

Google and Facebook (and all the other major social websites) use something called a "Quality Score" or "Relevance Score". When running paid campaigns, you'll get a score from 1 to 10 based on how relevant your ad is to the audience.

Here's the important part: Your Quality Score directly affects where your ad is placed and how much you pay to rank there.

If you bid the same as your competitor but have a higher Quality Score, your ads are more likely to reach your target audience. In fact, if your Quality Score is much higher than theirs, you can beat them while spending less.

Target audience for organic and paid ads

There is no such thing as an "organic audience" or a "paid audience". We are all the same. Our activity only varies depending on our place in the buyer cycle.

What do I mean by that?

To explain, I'll use search as an example. As a rule, people click on paid offers much less often than on organic offers. In fact, just under half of Google searches result in an organic click, compared to roughly one in 22 that result in a paid click.

Target markets - difference between paid and organic target groups

However, this does not mean that paid search is a waste of money, as paid listings outperforms organic listings for high commercial intent keywords by a ratio of almost 2: 1.

That means that paid clickers are generally more skilled. They've done their research, know they need a specific product or solution, and they're ready to buy.

How to Find Your Ideal Target Market for PPC and Paid Social Campaigns

If you offer a niche product or service (e.g. car insurance for young drivers) your target market is pretty clear.

Things get more complex when you have an incredibly diverse customer base or a product or service that is mass marketed. However, it is still possible to drill down on a target market for your PPC and paid social activities.

1. Look for similarities in your current customer base

Unless you're a brand new company, you already have a customer base. These customers hold the key to understanding your ideal target market.

You are likely to share some important behaviors, traits, or interests, even if at first glance they are very different. It's doubtful the only thing that holds them together is a shared love of your brand.

Consider the following data points:

Age: Aim for a broad age group or generation. Are you Baby Boomers or Gen X? Millennials or Zoomers?
Stage of life: Are they students? New parents or parents of older children? Middle Aged Or Retired?
Place: Where are you based? Are they all in the same time zone?
Purchasing power: How rich are you? Would they consider your product or service a big ticket item?
Interests: What do they do if they don't buy your product? Do you have a favorite sports team, music artist, or TV show?
Pain points: What are your reasons for looking for a product like yours?

Neither of these factors tells you everything about your target market, and you shouldn't use a single trait like age or location to define how you talk to them. However, when combined, these traits will help you aim more effectively.

2. Understand why people buy from you

You know who your existing customers are. Now you need to find out why they are your customers in the first place.

People buy for a number of reasons, but some of the most common are:

To meet a basic need: The lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, including things like food and shelter.
For convenience: You have an immediate need (e.g. you are thirsty), so take the quickest or easiest route to buy (e.g. to the nearest café).
As a replacement or upgrade: Perhaps your old suit no longer fits as well, or maybe it's finally time to upgrade to a smart TV.
Because it is desirable: Buying a fancy new watch or an expensive car can improve your standing in the eyes of others.
Due to peer pressure: Your friends want you to buy something, so you do.
To pamper yourself: Sure you don't need this thing, but you deserve it (or at least you tell yourself)
Because it's the latest trend or the latest innovation: Just check out the queues whenever a new iPhone starts up.
It offers good value for money: Perhaps there is a product on sale that you have had your eye for a long time, or perhaps you have never considered it, but the offer is too good to ignore.

Sometimes a purchase falls into several categories. A new car could be a destination, a replacement for an older model and much more efficient than your old gas eater.

Try to understand the main reason people choose your product. To find out, do a customer survey and ask:

Why did you even look for this product?
Why did you buy from us and not as a rival?
What other factors played a role in your decision-making process?
What would have stopped you from buying our product?

3. Follow the target market data

Would you like to know why startups fail the most?

It's not because they're running out of money or the price of their product is too high. This is because there is no market need for their product.

Target markets - reasons why startups fail

This is what happens when the people behind a company are so blind that they don't stop trying to figure out if someone needs what they're selling. They are based on assumptions rather than data.

Don't fall into the same trap. Never assume that you know your target market and understand what drives them to buy if you haven't taken the time to ask them. When they answer, use those answers to guide your marketing rather than gut feeling.

Here's how to integrate your target market into your paid ads

Once you understand your target market, you can use those insights to educate your paid advertising strategy. Find out how to do it.

1. Segment your target market

Your research may have identified multiple subgroups in your overall target market. You can get all of this demographic at once with a single, generic campaign.

However, you will likely get much better results if you segment your audience and target each segment with different ads.

McDonald & # 39; s is a fantastic example. See how the fast food giant defines its target market:

Target Markets - McDonald & # 39; s target market

Trying to literally reach everyone! Most campaigns have a wide reach, but they don't always target everyone with the same ads.

As you would expect from a large multinational company, its alignment is extremely sophisticated and subtle. Let's look at two McDonald & # 39; s ads, both of which are targeted at a young target market and largely related to topics such as activism and social justice.

Almost half of the audience for this ad were people ages 18 to 24. It's cool, inclusive, and directs users to YouTube, a platform with exceptionally high reach among younger viewers.

Here is another example:

The audience for this ad was older, 50% of the audience was between 25 and 34 years old. It wasn't even shown to people ages 18-24, which probably reflects the more serious, corporate-sounding tone of voice.

2. Improve your target market through demographic targeting

Platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn offer many demographic options for reaching your ideal target market through social ads. These options start at the top level and include things like:

However, it is possible to get much more detailed.

With the help of Facebook Audience Insights, you can play around with all of these options to understand the size and makeup of your target market. Below is a top-level breakdown for people in the United States interested in digital marketing or advertising:

Digital Marketing Advertising Target Markets in the United States

This is a useful starting point for understanding this target market, but it is possible to dig much deeper. If I refine my search from anyone interested in digital advertising and marketing to men with those interests, who are between the ages of 25 and 34 and who live in California, I can see that they:

almost certainly studied
most likely to work in sales or production
interested in Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss
Clicking ads almost twice as often as the average Facebook user

The more you already know about your audience, the more you can find out about them. It is a virtuous circle.

3. Exclude certain audiences from paid search campaigns

You've done your research, broken your target market into smaller subgroups, and created unique paid search campaigns with specific landing pages for each target audience.

But there is a problem.

Users click on ads that target different audiences. This means that they will see landing pages that are not relevant to them. Instead of buying, they click and go straight to your competitors.

Fortunately, you can get rid of this problem (and others) with audience exclusions. They enable you to:

Stop targeting existing customers
Exclude people who are better suited to another campaign
Remove website visitors who have already taken the desired action

To add audience exclusions to your Google Ads campaigns, do the following:

Sign in to your Google Ads account.
Click on "Audiences".
Click on Exclusions.
Click the blue plus sign.
Select "Campaign" or "Ad Group" from the drop-down menu.
Click the pencil icon and select the appropriate campaign or ad group.
Use Find and Browse to find the audiences you want to exclude.
Click on "Save".

Conclusion

As with any element of marketing strategy, identifying your ideal target market takes time. If you are in a rush to get your paid campaigns started and generate results, this is a step you may want to skip.

But I guarantee it will be worth investing the energy upfront. You reach more of the right people. You are more likely to convert leads and generate more sales. And you save money by reducing inefficient campaigns.

What tactics did you use to define your ideal target market?