How to Target the Right Audience with Digital Ads

If you are running any type of digital advertising campaign, it is crucial that you are selecting the right audience to target for your business. Targeting the wrong audience can result in minimal conversions and a lot of ad spend down the drain.

Install Pixel Tracking

First and foremost, have all relevant pixels/tags (Google Analytics, Google Remarketing Tag, Facebook Pixel, etc) installed on your site. This is the best way to collect data about your audience and understand who is coming to your site. Once a visitor visits your site, information on their age, location and interest categories are collected and stored within your Google Analytics account.

Define Your Core Audience

Before you’ve even begun advertising, you would (should) have developed a brand persona. A brand persona is a detailed outline of your ideal customer. This is your core audience.

An example of a persona could look like such; 

Amy is a 32 year old female who lives in Vancouver, BC. She lives an active lifestyle, enjoys cooking healthy recipes, discovering new hikes and going to concerts. Her favourite clothing brands are Underarmour, Kit + Ace and Vessi and her go-to snacks are anything by Made Good.

To begin your campaign, you would define your audience targeting in Facebook or Google (or Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc) via the demographic, geographic and psychographic (interest) targeting options. In this case, the audience targeting could look like;

Females, ages 25-54, living in Canada with interests in outdoors, sports, cooking and healthy foods.

Expand Your Audience Targeting

Once you have a decent amount of traffic coming to your site from the different ad platforms, you can create a Retargeting Audience. A Retargeting Audience targets those who have previously visited your site as they’ve shown clear interest in your company. This is where those pixels play an important role.

Another great way to expand your audience targeting is by creating Lookalike (LAL) Audiences. This is where you would take a high value audience, such as your email list or list of Purchasers (via Facebook Event), and create a lookalike of that audience. This can be done through the ad platform such as Facebook or Pinterest. This will create an audience that is similar to those on your email list or those who have purchased from you.

Update and Refine

Shifting trends can affect your target audience. It’s best practice to continually keep an eye on who is visiting your site and update and refine your targeting as needed.

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