Reaching The Right Audience With Your Ads

Whoa, there, sparky! Before you start thinking that you can throw money at a problem to make it go away, think again. For this, the “problem” is needing more sales, leads, etc., which is why you’re running ads in the first place, right? But the solution definitely isn’t just to throw it up in front of the masses, nonononono.

What?? I thought that this was a numbers game, so the more people that see my ads, the better my odds of getting conversions – was I wrong?

No, not exactly, you’re pretty well right on. Sort of. Picture this, if you will – your business is one where you sell something that a LOT of people use. Like logos … yeah, let’s use logos as our hypothetical for this.

Ok, so – you make logos & you know that there’s a TON of people who need logo design made, so you take out an ad for logo design & you pick your keywords that you think people are going to be searching on. BOOM! You get instant results from your ad campaign & you can see that your ad is getting ALL. KINDS. OF. CLICKS. (OMGALLTHECLICKS!) and you do your little happy dance & wait for your orders or leads to start rolling in.

(Crickets)

No big deal, you tell yourself, people are probably comparison shopping & I know that I’ll win in the comparisons because my stuff is WAY better than that one outfit in the northwest of the country who totally copied it. It’s probably just taking them a little time, I’ll check back in a week & see where my numbers are.

(Crickets)

WHATTHEHECKISGOINGONANDWHEREAREMYORDERS?!

So you’ve waited & been notified a couple times that you’ve hit your automatic billing cutoff & you’ve spent invested a gajillion Ameros in your ad but you’ve seen no results. Zero. Zip. Nada. Ok, time to head over to your metrics, where you can see more in-depth data on your ad’s performance. What’s this? You see that there’s a search term section & you can actually see the term that caused your ad to display. THIS. IS. AWESOME! So you start digging into the data to see what you can learn.

Free? What the heck?

You notice right away that there’s something amiss & your ad has been shown on search terms like free logo, best logomaker free, sports logo, vintage car logo, free logo design, free custom logo, etc. (you get the point).

This … this … this is unacceptable!!

Right you are! But you spent a gajillion Ameros on your ad, shouldn’t you have seen some results? Not really, because the ad was shown to ALL. THE. WRONG. PEOPLE. Since the time that I started writing this post, there have been H-U-N-D-R-E-D-S of searches in the US alone on “free logo” (link). Look at that list a little closer & you’ll see that a big chunk of it is a search for free fonts, which is kind of funny when we’re talking about good logo design – pro tip: free fonts don’t make for awesome logos.

What am I supposed to do about this?

Ready? Aim!

No, that’s it, really, just aim to deliver your ads to your “target market” for the best possible results? Who’s your target market? Your ideal customer. If you sell cakes online, you don’t want to deliver your ads to shadetree mechanics on DIY sites. Depending on the platform you’re using to serve up your ads, you may be able to define “negative keywords” which will keep your ad out of searches that don’t work for your model. Like “free logo” for example.

Man, hypotheticals are fun!

Ok … I think I’m getting it but I sell widgets to wandering wizards in the Shire. How do I reach them?

Well, I suppose the easy way would be demographically. Let’s say that you get your ad graphics all set up & have your budget & landing page all set up, now you need to tell your ad platform who to deliver the ad to. Most wandering wizards in the Shire are centuries-old men who don’t live there, they’re just passing through. So you can set the demographic on your ad to target males, at least 200 years old, in the Shire but don’t live there. That should be a pretty good start!

But what about the crabby old men trees that pass through there?

Hmm, yeah, I see your point. Maybe try refining your audience a tad more by defining interests. Exclude the occupation of photosynthesis & include the interest in saving the world – NOW you should be set!

Whatever you do & whatever your business needs are, a little careful planning at the outset can go a loooong way toward getting you where you need to be – especially with ads. So be sure that you’re reaching the right target audience!