There are a whole host of options when it comes to targeting your display campaigns, and with each layer of targeting you reduce your potential audience pool and increase your cost. The question you need to answer is what is the right balance for you.
Many times it comes down to the type of campaign you are running. Previously I have talked about how to measure the success of Lead Generation and Branding campaigns and, due to the different goals of both, it is fairly easy to decide what level of targeting to go with. For a Branding campaign the goal is to get in front of as many people as possible with your message, so your targeting is non-existent or very broad (anyone over 18 in the US for instance).
Lead Generation campaigns, however, require much more sophisticated targeting and optimization, since the goal is to drive leads for your product or service, and you want to ensure that the people seeing your media will actually be prospective customers. As long as you know the key makeup of your customer base, you can do some pretty sophisticated targeting to determine exactly who sees your ad. Some of the targeting options include:
- Age
- Gender
- Location (down to an actual address)
- Industry/vertical of employment
- Education
- Title
- Income
- Interests/online behavior
- User profile (based on the site)
- Purchase history
- Purchase intent
- Time of day/day of week
- Language
- Mobile device
- Company IP address
- Whether or not they have visited your site (retargeting)
These are just a few of the key targeting layers you can add, and there any many, many more that can allow you to hone in on exactly who you want to advertise to. With a Lead Generation campaign you want to be as targeted as your budget will allow, knowing that the more layers of targeting you add the higher your CPM (cost per thousand impressions) will be. The higher your CPM, the less impressions you serve and the fewer people will see your ad.
This is the tightrope you have to walk with targeting, and it is something you should change and optimize as you go in order to find the most efficient level of targeting that drives the largest volume of high quality leads into your pipeline. The typical rule of thumb is to start with more targeting layers versus less and, as your campaign progresses and based upon your initial success, test different scenarios. If you are using age, gender, industry, title, income, and interests as targets and are driving leads, but it is not an efficient CPL (cost per lead) based on your business model, then test a portion of your impressions by taking off a few layers of targeting. In this scenario you are lowering your CPM, thereby increasing your impressions, and exposing your media to a larger audience. The desired result is to drive more leads at a lower CPL. If this test proves successful, then you have a new baseline for the level of targeting you need to be successful at driving leads.
But don’t stop there, try it again and peel off another layer of targeting and test that too. The goal here is to to test, test, test, until you find the perfect mix of targeting that helps you drive leads at an efficient CPL. By finding your optimal level of targeting you will be on your way to effectively using display advertising to drive quality leads into your business.