A guide to proper targeting on VKontakte. Tips for effectively targeting VKontakte Proper targeting
How to set up targeting on Vkontakte? Sooner or later, people who run their business on Vkontakte are faced with this issue. In the article, you will learn how to properly set up targeted advertising on Vkontakte in 2020 and, most importantly, you will receive detailed step-by-step instructions.
Save this article for yourself. You can return to it the moment you're ready to set up your ad campaign!
The content of the article:
Where to start, you ask?
Decide on the target audience
Take the relevant data from Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics (Audience tab in the left menu). If there is no information about the target audience, you need to build a hypothesis about who your potential buyer might be.
When you have decided on the target audience, select the options for placing ads. Will you advertise your VKontakte community, or attract users to the site to make a conversion.
Next, form the overall budget for the advertising campaign. Also, be sure to set a test budget, as you cannot launch a campaign without a test. First you need to check the audiences, banners and all settings. Remember that testing takes at least 2-3 days.
How to calculate the budget of an advertising company?
To calculate, you need to know the formulas and indicators that are used in targeted advertising:
- CPC - pay per click;
- CTR - click through rate, defined as the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions, measured as a percentage;
- CPM - payment for impressions (VKontakte pays for 1000 impressions);
- CR - conversion rate.
Two formulas can be used to calculate the budget, depending on what type of payment you will be using:
- Budget = Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM) / 1000 x Impressions.
- Budget = cost per click (CPC) x number of clicks.
Where can I get the necessary CTR to calculate? If this is your first campaign, use the average value for VKontakte (0.03% for teasers, slightly higher for the feed). In the future, take the arithmetic average of the campaigns carried out.
You can also use these formulas for calculations:
- Impressions = Clicks / CTR.
- CTR = clicks / impressions.
- Clicks = Impressions x CTR.
- Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) = budget / number of impressions x 1000.
- Cost per click (CPC) = budget / number of clicks.
- CR (conversion rate) = number of conversions / number of clicks.
Consider an example:
CR (conversion rate) = 7% .
It was committed 500 clicks.
500 clicks x 7% = 35 conversions (leads).
Average check of the company- 3,500 rubles.
Marketing costs- 30%, which means that you can spend no more than 1,050 rubles (3,500 rubles x 30%) on attracting one client.
The total budget of the Republic of Kazakhstan (for 35 leads): 35 clicks x 1050 rubles = 36,750 rubles.
Cost per click (CPC): 36,750 rubles / 500 clicks = 73.5 rubles.
CTR= 0.9% (you can set a different CTR based on your experience with advertising campaigns).
500 clicks / 0.9% = 55 556 impressions.
Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM): 36,750 rubles / 55,556 impressions x 1000 = 661 rubles.
When you have calculated everything, you can go to the VKontakte advertising account and create banners and targeting.
However, you can do it differently. First, go to the advertising account, set up approximate targeting in order to understand what approximate cost you will have for clicks or impressions, and then do all the calculations and start creating banners and fine-tuning targeting.
How to set the cost of advertising Vkontakte?
In fact, all audience settings affect the cost of advertising. Changing at least one leads to a change in the total amount. VKontakte always shows the coverage of the target audience that matches your parameters and the recommended price in the right corner of the advertising account.
- Bottom line. At this price, you will be able to reach approximately 70% of the audience.
- Upper border. At this price, you will be able to reach more than 90% of the audience.
It is impossible to cover 100% of the entire audience. Not all VKontakte users access the network regularly, which means they will be able to see your ads.
Remember: VKontakte inflates the price for advertising ads, so I advise you to start with a lower rate - from 30%. At least as a test of settings. There is an auction of the first price in the social network - exactly the amount that you set as a bid is written off.
What to choose: pay for clicks or for impressions?
It all depends on the specific advertising campaign: many factors influence the payment method. But if you are just starting to master targeting, I advise you to choose pay per click. This way you will only pay for specific clicks on your ad. If you choose to pay per 1,000 impressions, you run the risk of wasting your budget if your targeting is poor.
Be sure to set limits on all ads. This will insure against unnecessary write-offs and help control the budget.
How to work with the VKontakte advertising account?
- Carousel. Here you can pack from 3 to 10 product cards, a link and a phone number by which you can place an order. The carousel is displayed in the user's news feed.
- Recording with a button. More versatile than the carousel, but the target action that the client must complete is only one. The options are sign up, buy, join and so on. It will also appear in the news feed.
- Universal text-graphic block. Shown in the sidebar of the VKontakte menu. You can sew up a link or a phone number.
- Collection of applications. Designed to obtain contact information of users. The place of display is the news feed.
- Advertising in stories. A fresh promotional post format designed for placement in user stories. Hangs, like regular stories, 24 hours.
- Site advertising. An external link is inserted into this block to navigate to an external resource. Designed to increase site traffic from social networks.
Setting targeting options
First of all, choose the topic of the ad and the subsection to which your ad belongs. There may be several subsections. These parameters are filled for moderators. What you choose here does not affect audience settings. For some types of advertising, age restrictions must also be indicated.
All further settings already apply to the audience that you select to display ads.
1. Geography of users
The column "Except" is needed to remove some settlements from advertising. For example, you select broad targeting for all of Russia, but exclude Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In the columns "Regions", "Metro stations", "Streets" you can specify certain locations where users will see the ad. For example, you advertise a store located in the Akademichesky district of Moscow. You can consider residents of the area as potential buyers.
2. Audience demographics
Select the gender and age of the target audience. Relevant data is taken from user pages. But not everyone fills in full information about themselves, so when choosing, for example, targeting women aged 25-35, you do not take into account women who did not indicate their gender or age. For more precise adjustment to the target audience, it is recommended to use other parameters.
The Birthday option can be useful for some products and services. So, you can offer people who have a birthday coming up to buy gifts with a special discount. There are cases where this setting really worked.
The marital status is chosen by the user. This option can also be successfully used. For example, if a girl is proposed, she changes her marital status to "Engaged" and immediately starts seeing advertisements for wedding dresses, stylists, and photographers.
3. Interests of users
In this block, various interests are configured. You can choose one of the interests for each ad and track the reaction, or combine parameters to narrow down the target audience. But don't limit your audience too much! If you select from two or more parameters, then only those users who match all the selected parameters at once, and not one of them, will fall into your targeting.
The "Interests" parameter is the hobbies specified by the user on their page. There are many interests, start typing the one you need in the field and it will automatically pull up if it is on the list.
Advice. Remember that users do not always fill in their interests. And if they fill in, then in the future they either do not change them, or they do it very rarely. Therefore, interest targeting may not always produce the expected results.
It is better to use "Categories of interests". They are calculated based on user interaction with VKontakte communities and external sites on various topics. Now there are not so many categories of interests, and they are quite general. Soon the VKontakte team promises to expand this list by adding narrower categories.
4. User communities
Another interesting option for customizing ads is "communities". Here you can select any communities that you think potential clients might be in. For example, if your audience is accountants, they are most likely subscribed to accounting publics, as it is important for them to keep abreast of news about changes in legislation.
Pay attention to the number of subscribers, their activity within the public, the frequency of publishing material. If the last post in the community was six months ago, it is unlikely to be interesting.
Advice. Use parsing services - there are paid and free ones that will help you segment your audience more accurately. Among other things, parsing services allow you to collect subscribers of communities of the desired topic, to identify among them active ones who are members of several communities.
The "Exclude" option allows you to remove from targeting those communities that you do not want to advertise. Often they indicate their community here, whose subscribers are already up to date with news and promotions.
5. Applications and websites
Here you can specify the sites on which the user logs in through his VKontakte account, or using various applications that the visitor uses. They can be excluded from targeting.
VKontakte also allows you to select the user's religious affiliation.
If you tag travelers, the service will collect all users who visited the VKontakte website from at least two different countries over the past year.
6. Education and work
When choosing a secondary or higher education, the service allows you to select certain educational institutions and the time of study.
You can also select user positions. The data for this parameter is collected from users' personal pages.
7. Additional options
Devices, operating systems, and browsers used by users can be selected from the proposed list. It is enough to start entering the required parameter.
But let's take a closer look at audiences for retargeting.
This is a very important parameter that you should definitely use if you have your own website.
How does retargeting work?
Retargeting- a tool that allows you to show promotional materials to users who are already familiar with a product or service or have visited the site before.
Retargeting allows you not to miss "warm leads". So, if a person went to the site from contextual advertising, looked at the product or even put it in the cart, but didn’t buy it in the end, VKontakte retargeting will help to “catch up” with the user on the social network. This way you increase conversions on the site.
For VKontakte, it is better to collect an audience of at least 1000 people, but it is better to start with 3000 or more users.
To set up retargeting, you need to generate a retargeting code (or pixel) and paste it on your website. Then VKontakte will be able to collect site visitors so that in the future you can catch up with them with advertising.
To get started, go to the left menu in the section "Retargeting" .
To create a pixel, you need to follow three simple steps:
- Specify the name of the pixel.
- Specify the domain of the site where you want to paste the code.
- Select a theme for the site.
Now you need to copy the resulting code and paste it on the site between the tags
And. If you don't have access to the site code, just contact your system administrators (or developers).
Until you install a pixel, it will have a "not working" status. After installation, the status will change to "working". From now on, you can start creating and configuring retargeting audiences.
Retargeting Audiences
Audience - a customizable VKontakte user base to which you can target your advertisements. The audience can be filled in two ways:
- load from file;
- get from the site using the VKontakte pixel.
To create a retargeting audience, you need to go to the "Audiences" tab and select "Create Audience".
In the window that opens, the service offers two options for collecting an audience: using a pixel, or by uploading a file.
How to create audiences with a retargeting pixel?
With a pixel, you can create two types of audiences:
- all site visitors;
- users who visited individual pages.
To create an audience of all site visitors, you must:
- Enter the name of the audience.
- Select the previously created pixel from the drop-down list.
- Specify the rule "All site visitors".
- Select the time period for which you need data: for all time, for a month or a day. The time period can be changed later at any time.
- Save the audience.
To create an audience of users who visited individual pages, you need to:
- Specify the name of the audience.
- Select a pixel.
- Select the "Users who visited specific pages" rule.
- Specify the time interval. Next, you can select the necessary parameters. Here you can specify users who visited a specific page of the site, for example, a product card. To do this, insert a link to a specific page into an empty box and select the appropriate rule from the drop-down list - it depends on the link whether it will change or not.
- Save the audience.
How to create an audience using a list?
It is enough to select the source "Load from file" in the window that opens. Next, you need to select a file on your computer and upload it to the advertising account. VKontakte will automatically find users for you based on the data provided.
What data does the system “recognize”?
- email addresses;
- telephones;
- User IDs.
Please note that uploaded lists must match
21.03.2017 | 12:15
Greetings, dear friends! I think none of you will argue with the fact that the promotion of any projects on the Internet will be ineffective without quality advertising. I will not tell you about all the existing ways of promotion, but will focus on social networks. If you remember, earlier I already wrote reviews on how it works, where to start promoting a project on a social network in order to attract customers, and much more. All this knowledge will be useful to us today, because on their basis the main rule of promotion in social networks has already been formed - advertising should always cover the audience of users who interested in your offer. In today's article, I want to move away from the already beaten path - the creation of and, and consider a much faster method in terms of return on investment. So, on the agenda is VKontakte targeting, its capabilities, rules of use and the principle of setting.
Basic terms and definitions
Before mastering the functionality of targeting advertising, I suggest first finding out what kind of fruit it is and what it is eaten with. So, remember what VK advertisements pop up on the left side of your news feed? Remembered? If yes, then you are already familiar with targeted advertising. As a rule, such ads consist of a title and an image. Sometimes the basic composition can be diluted with a small text description.
If we compare targeted advertising on VKontakte with classic contextual advertising, then we immediately want to note their main difference - ultra-precise targeting ads not on page content, but for a specific group of users. In other words, targeted ads are aimed at a specific target audience, at users interested in a product or service.
With the help of the simplest toolkit offered by the contact, you can easily perform advertising setting. Among the options available to you, there will be both ordinary ones - geotargeting and demotargeting, and narrower ones. The latter include education, position, interests. VK targeting will allow you to show your ads exclusively to people who listen to the songs of a particular musical group or live near a particular bus stop.
Basic Targeted Advertising Terminology
That our course of study be complete, I just have to create a glossary of terms for you that will allow you to switch to "you" with targeting. When setting up an advertising campaign, you will definitely come across such terms as:
On this theoretical training in the basics can be considered complete, I propose to move on to more pressing issues.
Who is targeted advertising for?
Daily traffic is about 80 million people. Just think how huge this number is! Unfortunately, despite the richness of the audience, many businessmen may not even know what targeting is, since this type of promotion simply does not suit them.
I suggest you understand for sure whether you should go through further training and move on to the practical part of the article or finish your acquaintance with targeted advertising right now. So, it makes sense to study targeting for those who:
- sells clothes, shoes, accessories
- sells electronics- smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.
- busy in the field restaurant business– attracts visitors to fast food outlets, cafes, bars, restaurants, nightclubs, raves
- is engaged promotion of information products– trainings, seminars, master classes and so on
- employed in certain areas B2B-business
- promotes schools of dance, drawing and the like
- advertises quests, entertainment programs, game rooms And so on
Who can't use?
- industry
- construction and repair
- most large and long-term B2B segments
- sale of tobacco products and alcohol
- sex shops
- HYIPs and financial pyramids
Agree that selling specialized industrial equipment on VKontakte is not an easy task. Although, if you try hard and know how to set up ads, it is possible that this is also possible.
As for tobacco products, alcohol, all kinds of pyramid schemes and sex industry products, they would, of course, go to the social network simply with “Hurrah!”. But, unfortunately, such products do not pass site moderation so look for other ways to promote them.
How to find your target audience?
For your ad to be effective and get the most out of it, it’s not enough just to know what your target audience looks like, you also need to be able to find her. This list will help you basic criteria, which you can focus on when drawing up a portrait of your consumer. The list of main parameters includes:
In total, VKontakte will offer you about 20 selection parameters. You have the right to set up targeting in the way that seems right to you. You'll even have the ability to sort users by very specific criteria. For example, your ad will be shown only to people who are going to celebrate a birthday in the near future. In the future you will be able to analytics and calculate which of the settings produced the best result for your ad.
In general, I can tell you with firm confidence that with the help of targeting, you are guaranteed to achieve simply fantastic results- but only if you clearly understand what and to whom you offer.
Irreplaceable assistants in finding the target audience
Since you already have an idea of how targeted advertising works, you know, and even managed to get acquainted with the filters for selecting the target audience, I think it would not be superfluous to tell you about services for selection of this audience by user id. Here are a few sites that know almost everything about how to properly set up targeted VK advertising:
- Pepper.ninja - a tool for improving the accuracy of targeting, which collects the target audience both on the open spaces of Vkontakte and Facebook. The principle of its operation is based on obtaining data on the most active users of publics and groups. All service work is done in the cloud.. An undoubted advantage can be considered simplicity of the interface which is understandable to users on an intuitive level
- VKParser - a professional tool for smm-makers, which is effectively used to promote all kinds of goods and services on a social network. Parser accurately determines the target audience by analyzing user profiles and communities. The service can search for popular posts, evaluate VKontakte messages on external sites.
Gather the target audience for business with Pepper.ninja
By and large, those who clearly understand who their product or service is aimed at, who knows how to set up VKontakte targeting, may not use auxiliary services at all. The functionality of VK will be quite enough for you to independently determine the target audience, if you have a specific idea about it. But these services save time very well.
Types of targeting
Targeted advertising is something between contextual advertising and teaser. Unfortunately, it cannot be shown to those who are engaged in the internal search of VKontakte, as is the case with the context. However, the correct setting allows you to find the target audience for product PR and get rid of the senseless traffic drain, as is the case with the teaser network. To date, you and I have access to whole 5 formats of targeted advertising VK.
Image and text
This option is great if you can’t put all the necessary information in the title of the ad or want to briefly describe the promoted product.
- The maximum possible ad title length is 25 characters
- The maximum allowed description length is 60 characters
- The minimum banner resolution is 90*60 pixels.
Large Image with Title
This format is the most popular and is considered the most universal. It is most often used in cases where it immediately becomes clear from the title what the ad is about.
- The maximum title size is 25 characters
- The minimum banner resolution is 90*120 pixels
Exclusive
The advantage of this format is that the ad will be the only one on the page and will have a larger banner. This option is much more expensive than the others, and it can rarely be called effective.
- The maximum title length remains the same - 25 characters
- The minimum size is 90*160px
Promoting a group or community
It is actively used to promote brands, publics, groups that are dedicated to certain places or specific individuals.
- The title will duplicate the name of your group. You can shorten or leave it as you wish. As for increasing it, it's impossible.
- The minimum banner resolution is 90*90 pixels
special format
Perfect option for the promotion of thematic groups.
- The title duplicates the name of your public or community
- The minimum banner scale is 128*128 pixels
- The banner must be contrasting and different from the main background of VKontakte
Basic Rules
Before you advertise on VK, you will need to check the ad. This is necessary for the VKontakte administration to successfully moderate it and publish it. I can tell you right away that if you make a mistake or a typo in the text, use a low-quality, frightening or simply frank banner, your ad will be rejected.
List
Before submitting an ad, I suggest that you study the basic rules. So, VKontakte categorically prohibits the creation of advertising campaigns:
Subtleties and features
Please note that:
- the image you use in your ad must be high quality
- in the case of applying text to the image, the symbols occupy no more than 50% of the total area of the banner
- the subject of the ad should repeat the subject of the site to which it takes the user
- if you are posting an ad promoting medical services, you will need to provide the social network with relevant documentation
- your ad does not violate the privacy policy
Well, in general, those who are engaged in honest business, do not suffer from problems with the Russian language, do not need to worry about anything. With a probability of 99.9%, your ads will successfully pass site moderation. In extreme cases, VKontakte will notify you of the reason for the rejection of your request.
Targeting step by step guide
Well, now let's get down to the most interesting part - advertising placement and its settings. For this you need:
- Follow the link and create your personal account
- On the left side of the window, click on the button Targeted Ads»
- In the window that opens, click on the " Create ad»
Creating an ad
To make it very clear to you how to place an ad in a contact, I suggest going all the way to creating a targeted ad using my example:
- We choose what we need project format which we are going to advertise. In my case it is " External site" website.
If one of you is interested in and is going to advertise your own community, the principle of action in this case will be similar, but you will not need to use UTM tags - Enter the address of our site in the top field, the domain will be pulled up automatically. Now click on the button " Continue»
- In the window that opens, fill out the standard form.
In the category " Decor» I choose the format for my ad « big image”, and then I write in the title bar the text that I want to see on the banner 
- Since my site is all about investments, in the ad subject category, I choose " Financial services»
Setting the target audience
- Since the readers of my site are not limited to only one country, in the settings in the paragraph " A country" I choose " Any". You will choose the option that you need. Here you can also specify the city, metro station and even the street
- Let's move on to filtering by gender. My target audience are men, and therefore I choose them. You form this category according to your needs.
- Decide who will be interested in your product, how old are your potential customers, and then sort the list. In my case, the basis is 25-55 years
- If the product you are advertising will be of interest to future birthdays, check the appropriate box in the line " Birthday»
- After all the data is entered, on the right side of the screen you will see how much one of your ads costs and what audience it can cover
- We go down even lower and fill in the categories " Interests», « Education and work". Since my site is designed for people involved in investment activities, trading in the foreign exchange and stock markets, I sort the target audience by choosing those users who have higher education and are interested in business, investments, passive income, money, Internet earnings and the like.
In the future, you can change and play with interests, for example, remove higher education, since very often people without it have much more zeal for knowledge and learning new things - I advise you to analyze 10-20 representatives of your target audience in order to find groups in which the maximum number of potential consumers of your product is concentrated. This information will be useful to you when filling out the category " Communities»
- According to the criterion outlook» It will be possible to filter the target audience by religion. In my case, this item is of no use, so I skip it.
- As for the line " Travelers”, then by checking this box, you will limit your target audience to people who travel abroad at least once every six months. This function was not useful to me, but it will be useful for those who advertise tours or expensive goods.
- In the category " Education» you will see the position « Job title". Here I am interested in people who occupy such positions as an economist, director, manager, and so on. You choose those specialists who are the target audience of your project
- Let's go to " Additional Options". Here we can fill in the retargeting groups, specify the devices from which users of our VKontakte target audience should enter. Personally, it doesn’t matter to me whether the user will scroll through the news feed while sitting at a computer or using a mobile phone. However, if you, for example, sell cases for smartphones, it would be logical to limit the target audience by indicating in this category " All mobile phones»
- Operating systems and browsers are configured in the same way.
- Finally, let's move on to financial matters. In the category " Setting price and location» We choose the PR option that suits our wallet best. Since I am confident in the given target audience, I activate " Pay for impressions»
- The recommended social network price for 1000 impressions was 6.33 rubles for my ad.
However, I lower it to 1.1 rubles. I advise you to start with the minimum prices, which will be an order of magnitude lower than the recommended ones. If, after passing the moderation, your ad does not begin to be published, feel free to increase the price by 50 kopecks until the ad appears on the network. - Now that everything is ready, give your ad campaign a name and click on " Create ad»
- Set limits and run ad
And finally, a few more useful tips that will help you when creating an advertising campaign:
Encourage your target audience to click through your ad by offering some bonus. By the way, information about promotions or discounts, written in the title of the ad or in its description, gives an excellent return.
conclusions
Well, it's time for me to end here. The information provided here is more than enough to get you started with targeted advertising. Don't forget to share your experience of promoting projects on social networks using targeting in the comments below this post. Tell us what you advertised, how you set up your ads, who your target audience was, and what result you got in the end. Well, on this I say goodbye to you. See you soon, friends!
If you find a mistake in the text, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter. Thanks for helping my blog get better!
Two facts. First: VKontakte is the most popular social network in Runet. Secondly, there are a lot of anti-cases on the Internet about VKontakte advertising - about how ineffective it is.
A simple conclusion suggests itself: not everyone can competently set up a targeted campaign from scratch. In this post, I tried to reveal all the nuances and features of the VKontakte advertising account, so that even a beginner can set up effective targeting.
If you want to save time on targeting and quickly recoup your investment in advertising, order advertising from specialists:
Decide on the target audience
Take the relevant data from Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics (Audience tab in the left menu). If there is no information about the target audience, you need to build a hypothesis about who your potential buyer might be.
When you have decided on the target audience, select the options for placing ads. Will you advertise your VKontakte community, or attract users to the site to make a conversion.
Next, form the overall budget for the advertising campaign. Also, be sure to set a test budget, as you cannot launch a campaign without a test. First you need to check the audiences, banners and all settings. Remember that testing takes at least 2-3 days.
How to calculate the budget?
To calculate, you need to know the formulas and indicators that are used in targeted advertising:
- CPC - pay per click;
- CTR - click through rate, defined as the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions, measured as a percentage;
- CPM - payment for impressions (VKontakte pays for 1000 impressions);
- CR is the conversion rate.
Two formulas can be used to calculate the budget, depending on what type of payment you will be using:
- Budget = Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM) / 1000 x Impressions.
- Budget = cost per click (CPC) x number of clicks.
Where can I get the necessary CTR to calculate? If this is your first campaign, use the average value for VKontakte (0.03% for teasers, slightly higher for the feed). In the future, take the arithmetic average of the campaigns carried out.
You can also use these formulas for calculations:
- Impressions = Clicks / CTR.
- CTR = clicks / impressions.
- Clicks = Impressions x CTR.
- Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) = budget / number of impressions x 1000.
- Cost per click (CPC) = budget / number of clicks.
- CR (conversion rate) = number of conversions / number of clicks.
Consider an example:
Two facts. First: VKontakte is the most popular social network in Runet. Secondly, there are a lot of anti-cases on the Internet about VKontakte advertising - about how ineffective it is.
A simple conclusion suggests itself: not everyone can competently set up a targeted campaign from scratch. In this post, I tried to reveal all the nuances and features of the VKontakte advertising account, so that even a beginner can set up effective targeting.
If you want to save time on targeting and quickly recoup your investment in advertising, order advertising from specialists:
Decide on the target audience
Take the relevant data from Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics (Audience tab in the left menu). If there is no information about the target audience, you need to build a hypothesis about who your potential buyer might be.
When you have decided on the target audience, select the options for placing ads. Will you advertise your VKontakte community, or attract users to the site to make a conversion.
Next, form the overall budget for the advertising campaign. Also, be sure to set a test budget, as you cannot launch a campaign without a test. First you need to check the audiences, banners and all settings. Remember that testing takes at least 2-3 days.
How to calculate the budget?
To calculate, you need to know the formulas and indicators that are used in targeted advertising:
- CPC - pay per click;
- CTR - click through rate, defined as the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions, measured as a percentage;
- CPM - payment for impressions (VKontakte pays for 1000 impressions);
- CR is the conversion rate.
Two formulas can be used to calculate the budget, depending on what type of payment you will be using:
- Budget = Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM) / 1000 x Impressions.
- Budget = cost per click (CPC) x number of clicks.
Where can I get the necessary CTR to calculate? If this is your first campaign, use the average value for VKontakte (0.03% for teasers, slightly higher for the feed). In the future, take the arithmetic average of the campaigns carried out.
You can also use these formulas for calculations:
- Impressions = Clicks / CTR.
- CTR = clicks / impressions.
- Clicks = Impressions x CTR.
- Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) = budget / number of impressions x 1000.
- Cost per click (CPC) = budget / number of clicks.
- CR (conversion rate) = number of conversions / number of clicks.
Consider an example:
The VKontakte social network is a platform with an accessible and easy way for inexperienced marketers to attract targeted traffic. In this article, we will take a step-by-step look at how to set up targeted advertising on VK (Vktarget), and what strategies exist for a profitable campaign.
The principle of operation when setting up this type of advertising is as follows - by selecting and enabling filters for various parameters, you narrow the display of ads to groups of the target audience and compose accurate ads for it that will attract attention and encourage a click. The task at the testing stage is to find the hottest segment of potential buyers and select ads with the best response for them.
Let's look at the stages of traffic movement in terms of sales:
- traffic > ad > landing (website, group or post in VK ...) > operator (application confirmation) > sale.
If you have your own store with a call center, you can influence all stages, except for the purchase of goods at the post office, if it is a cash on delivery.
The store can collect search traffic if it is SEO-optimized for user requests. I recently found a useful article about checking a site for duplicate pages and their impact on site positions - read it.
If you are attracting visitors to a one-page landing, you can only manage traffic in the first three stages.
But in both cases, almost 90% of success in success comes from knowing the portrait of a potential buyer and his location.
We come to the conclusion: the effectiveness of an advertising campaign depends on the chosen strategy and the accuracy of targeting settings for segmenting the target audience, which can only be revealed through testing - testing various hypotheses and "ad-landing" links.
Let's look at how it works, how to set up and launch targeting in VK.
How to set up targeted advertising on VKontakte.
To start working with an advertising campaign, you need to have at least one, and preferably several hypotheses, and create ads for them and set up targeting in VK for the target audience. How to do this is described in the article "" (links open in a new tab).
To launch profitable advertising and earn money, Vktarget has various filters to filter out non-target users from viewing ads. As settings are added, the reach of users decreases and the recommended cost per click or 1000 impressions changes. But you must understand that the more you narrow your target audience, the higher the CTR will be and the cheaper the target action will cost, since you will not pay for impressions to uninterested users.
Setting up VK targeting.
- First point - geography.
Not all countries can be allowed by the offer for accepting applications (if you are engaged in traffic arbitration through the CPA network), so we set up a filter for the required regions. You can specify the geo more precisely if we want to advertise our offer in those cities or regions where, for example, the offer provides courier delivery, or there are some other geo-based privileges that we focus on in the ad. It is also necessary to cut off countries, regions and cities with non-target audience. - Next comes floor— see for yourself here, but often not the ones you think about are buying, so if in doubt, you can divide users into two groups and test them for conversion (this applies to all settings).
- Age- here it is desirable to divide the target audience into smaller age groups, for example, 16-18 years old, 18-20 years old, .... At the same time, you will see how the “audience - recommended price” indicators change downwards in the upper right, and with the inclusion of the next filter, it becomes more and more acceptable.
- Family status- to indicate or not, depends on the advertised product.
- Next − interests, this parameter is not always applied, because many users indicate it in the settings when filling out the profile inaccurately and not always. The interest filter is useful when promoting niche products, such as "bite activator" for fishermen. If a person indicated in his profile that he is a fishing enthusiast, then this is definitely your potential buyer.
In the "interests" click "advanced settings" and look further. - Interest categories- but this must be used, indicating several suitable ones at once.
- Communities- the most important point of targeting CA. We indicate the places of the expected habitat of our clients, based on their portrait. The same applies to paragraph "Apps and Sites".
- outlook- this targeting can be applied when promoting narrow niche products such as "Muslim watches".
- Travelers- by checking the checkbox, you will show ads to business people traveling on business trips, and those who have the opportunity to often go to vacation spots.
- Education, work is another interesting filter for understanding user requests and priorities.
- Retargeting Audiences- targeting advertising to a specific list of people, for this you need to have it.
Required for all pages of the site. Firstly, the base for the following campaigns will be collected, and secondly, already at this stage, you can specify to whom to show ads and to whom not. For example, you can immediately subtract from impressions those who have already visited the landing page, that is, clicked on the ad, you can block the display of those who visited the page with the order form or “Thank you for your purchase”, thereby narrowing the reach and increasing CTR. - Next come " devices«, « OS" And " internet browsers«.
I’m playing trick: by specifying, for example, such settings as in the screenshot, in combination with a suitable age, you can sell quite expensive goods
Now the question is impressions or clicks in VK? With a bid per click, the spin-off occurs depending on the CTR and it is more difficult to work with clicks. This bid is used for high-reach impressions to determine click-through rate. To get started, I recommend putting "per 1000 impressions" by checking the box "Limit to 100 impressions per person."
After selecting targeting settings on VKontakte, you create audience groups for testing. This is somewhat laborious, but better than shooting sparrows from a cannon, trusting your forecasts and intuition.
I repeat, sometimes you do not expect conversion where it should not be in your opinion, and, for example, fashionable women's sandals will suddenly be bought by more men aged 45-50, and not girls 20 years old.
To facilitate the testing process, .
Attention! Social media moderators, and VK in particular, often do not let ads with affiliate links from CPA networks. This problem is almost 100% solved by connecting an agent's office. Not all CPA networks have such a tool, but most of them have this useful functionality. The agent's office is connected through the ticket system, that is, through a support request.
These are the basic settings for Vktarget - VKontakte targeting. We will talk about strategies for segmenting the target audience and testing advertising campaigns below.
- demographic and geographic filters are important components for target audience segmentation;
- interests - this filter is not always effective in terms of targeting, since VK data is taken from the profile of the network user that he specified during registration. They may change over time, or may not be accurate initially;
- categories of interests - they should be taken into account, this is targeting a warm audience;
- Communities are one of the most important filters for narrowing the target audience and getting into its hottest segment.
To accurately enable VKontakte filters, you first need to understand which users we need.
Audience priorities VKontakte.
Conventionally, all users can be distributed according to the levels of awareness of the need for the product of the Hunt ladder.
The user buys when he is at the last, fifth stage of choosing a supplier of goods (services), unless you have an impulse product with a rush demand.
But many do not pay attention to this and begin to advertise to people from the 1st step of the ladder, regardless of the product niche, while you need to focus on at least the 3rd, and then it will be “slightly warm” traffic.
Here is an example: a person wants to lose weight and chooses between going to a fitness club, buying a home exercise course, looking for a miracle pill, or other options. It is not known what he will choose, and whether he will choose at all, but simply will not give a damn about the problem.
Selling to audiences through Vktarget at the stage of awareness, especially indifference, right off the bat is almost impossible. As a rule, multi-step sales are needed here to warm up through various pads, free webinars, interesting videos, etc.
The third and fourth steps are near-target traffic with requests “How to lose weight by summer” or “How to build biceps”. Working with him is difficult, but possible.
And the fifth step is “almost hot” traffic with a search for a product or service by name (for example, “Seiko Watches”), as well as “hot” traffic with the additions “Buy”, “Order”, “Purchase”.
We will search for the most interested target audience in the VKontakte communities.
Search strategies for target audience segments.
And so, what data on the target audience are of interest in the first place:
- floor;
- age;
- Where does he/she work/study?
- where he lives;
- profession;
- interests;
- interest groups;
- VK groups;
- subscriptions/friends.
Stages of searching for target audience:
- we put forward a hypothesis for finding potential buyers on VKontakte: one hypothesis - one group - one advertising campaign;
- we search and analyze communities for the presence and concentration of potential buyers, this can be done manually through search engines and directly on VKontakte, or through paid and free parsers;
- we analyze the found audience to draw up a portrait - we look at what other groups it participates in, what its demographic data, geography of location, categories of interests, etc.
Read articles on how to search and create social networks using the parser (free).
In large communities with broad interests, there will be a “cold” segment corresponding to the “category of interests”. For example, your offer is “skiing”, and the group is called “Sports”.
"Warm" customers - in groups related to your topic (for example - "Snowboards" or "Goods for winter sports").
The hottest clients are in narrow profile communities (3000-30000 subscribers). These are active users, members of several thematic groups, participants in discussions and comments.
This also includes subscribers of opinion leader communities (for example, “V. Pupkin Fans” - the world champion in cross-country skiing). Think about who can be an opinion leader in your topic, find his profile, if there is one, whether he leads his group, what kind of subscriber activity is in it.
Here are examples of target audience search from “hot” to “cold” in descending order
| games and applications | Community promotion | Goods | Services |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fan associations by game or app | Competing groups | Competitor groups with the same specific product (here your offer should be more attractive) | Competitors with a similar service (example, "phone repair") |
| Communities with similar apps/games (similar genre) | Related topics | Stores with the same product category | In similar areas of services ("laptop repair") |
| Subscribers to major gaming communities or well-known apps | general thematic | Communities by product or category | With the same target audience (phone shops) |
| Interest categories | Interest categories | General topics (manufacturer brands, fashion style...) | General topics (communities of phone brands) |
| Interest categories | Interest categories |
After the analysis, we select the best communities in terms of the concentration of potential customers and add them to the list for future VK targeting.
Checking the reaction of a wide target audience
We set up and test different ads of targeted VK advertising on a general audience - we are looking for an effective trial-test method.
The task is to determine in general the average reaction to your proposal formulated in the ad, with a focus on 25 thematic groups at once (Vktarget allows you to indicate so many for one ad).
- We indicate in the targeting settings: gender, age, geography (advertising targeting which city, country ...).
- We enter the list of communities - links and names (25 target selected communities - preferably small and medium ones for a start, it is important that they be close in spirit-essence-narrowness of the direction)
- We select images with headlines for 10-20 ads.
Vkontakte ad formats.
- the first consists of a 25-character title, a small 90x65 image, a link domain, and an additional description. Use such teasers if you need to describe your proposal in more detail.
End descriptions with verbs with a call to action! For example: “Subscribe!”, “Join!”, “Find out!”, “Join!” (do not forget that the appeal to users should be on "you").
- another format is a block with a large 145x165 image and a title without a description. You can overlay some text, stickers, arrows on the image through a graphic editor, indicate the price, discount, etc., if it is appropriate. VK skips ads when the text takes up to 50% of the image.
This option from my practice gives the best results in terms of CTR.
It is desirable to upload a picture at least twice as large, and preferably 3-5 times, so that the clarity of the image is not lost.
With the help of the service, you can find many high-quality images that are not in the Yandex search, where everyone takes pictures from, which makes it possible to make original teasers.
Stage-2:
- We create/create 20 ads with different pictures and headings, if the budget does not allow it right away - 10 for now. We set each of them to all 25 selected communities - so we will see which one of them interested users, so to speak, the average temperature in the hospital.
I advise you to set up a rollback for impressions with a minimum bid price of 1 ruble. - We put a limit of 100 rubles. for each ad (so as not to drain the money).
- We launch ads, wait for moderation and look at the results.
Stage 3 - testing.
We unscrew one ad until the reach reaches 1000 people. (+/- 20-40 people). You can not wait to spend all 100r. for each ad, but the limit must be set, because if the user saw your ad 100 times and did not click, then it is not interesting to him.
If you missed the mark of coverage of 1000 unique users, it's okay. Just make the following announcements for approximately the same coverage so that you can compare the same indicators for testing accuracy.
Reach and views / impressions are different numbers, we need exactly the reach indicator! It is visible when we open the ad itself. Reach is the number of unique users who have seen this ad unit at least once, and you can reach this level in 5-15 minutes.
If the coverage for a specific ad is growing slowly, you need to increase the cost of 1000 impressions in the settings (this is the limit in the CPM column).
When the reach reaches 1000 people, but there are no results, delete this teaser so as not to waste your money.
Perhaps already at this stage you will have good ads with good results, this will be quite enough to start with.
Audience segmentation – one ad = one group.
For those who are confident in understanding the target audience, you can start right away with this. The same strategy is used if the indicators have fallen or you need to save the budget.
Purpose: narrowing the audience and precise offers for each group.
If the result suits you even without segmentation, you can continue the campaign while the traffic is coming. Focus on achieving landing page conversions so that all elements of your business system work in a plus.
Segmentation - stages.
We find the ad that performed the best - the best CTR / cost per click.
- We take each of its elements separately:
- We make teasers separately for each of the 25 groups that we selected initially.
How to make and select ads for each group - the principle: we take one of the communities, analyze and see what is popular in it, what words, content and feed the audience in this group reacts to (for which they put more likes, reposts, comments, which often published from content).
We create three ads based on each element from the successful ad selected earlier:
a) based on the title;
b) based on the picture;
c) based on the description (text or inscription on the picture, if any).
As a result, we have at least 9 teasers targeted at each group, taking into account both the element that has already shown itself well on average, and taking into account 1-2 other elements that are selected taking into account the exact (!) interests of the VK group subscribers.
We launch ads, not forgetting to set a limit of 100 rubles. for each. In the same way, we look at the coverage and evaluate the effectiveness (CTR / cost per click).
- We also make ad blocks for each group separately, taking into account the interests of users (idols, what they watch, what content they like, what events they are interested in, what companies know who the opinion leaders are for them, what programs they like on this topic, what skills they want to get-learn and so on.).
We use such hooks as slang or niche words, names, brands, etc. for the ad idea:
- Niche language (phrase words): roll, fly, flat, spot, park, dirt, vip ...
- Idols (TOP-10 famous in a narrow niche): Danny McCaskill
- Names of tricks: how to do a vanity, how to do a bannik, how to do a 360, a bar ...
- Show names: "NWD", ...
- Manufacturer-firms: NS-bikes, fly, rock-shox, Allinatione ...
— Who or what is the focus of attention for TA?
- Popular words: street, dirt, extreme ...
Use the service to select association words and use them in headings or pictures.
Thus, these hooks will give dozens and hundreds of ideas for titles and images of new teasers.
ESSENCE: the number of such ads can be endless - the task is to identify the best ones with a good CTR / cost per click, and then disable all unnecessary ones that performed poorly, and set up to attract visitors through VKontakte targeting to your landing page or community.
- every 1-3 enters - an excellent result.
- every 4-5 enters - a good result.
- every 6-7 enters - normal (like most).
- every 8-9 enters - the result is not very good.
- every 9-11 enters - you need to refine the community (design, elements, photos, content, presentation, focus, etc.).
If this is a subscription page - a landing page where you need to leave your contact for communication:
- about 8-10% of those who have switched sign up - you can already work. It all depends on your product and conversion into a client in the next steps. That is, from you or your manager who processes applications - if this is a product-service, from your series of touches - if this is an information business (selling information, services).
NOTE: if these are subscribers, you need to look at their reaction, so it is important to give a simple first step that will give them an incentive to contact you - a consultation, a gift, a bonus, an event, something free, etc. Mandatory for subscribers on the landing-subscription, it is also true for the VK group, especially if it is a complex service-product and you need an introductory explanation, or you need to show how you differ-better than others.
NOTE: if this is a topic like infobusiness, making money, a business with strong provocative headlines, dietary supplements, or something else controversial from the point of view of VKontakte moderators, they will constantly block it, and it’s difficult to create ads with whatever headlines you want (although in some cases you can). Sometimes it's easier to advertise in groups for at least half of the budget, and perhaps for the entire budget, if the groups show themselves satisfactorily.
What to do if all the ads performed poorly?
- We create another 20-40 radically different versions of teasers and repeat everything according to this checklist - we check, it is likely that they will work for these audiences (maybe they are waiting for another offer).
- If it doesn’t help, we check another one (perhaps it was set up for the wrong people). Therefore, it is very important to know the exact portrait of the client and it is necessary to carefully select groups to target the target audience.
Groups are usually much more than 25, so working with 25 is a test stage. Next, you need to test new communities in order to compare the effectiveness with each other and understand what the problem is - in the offer or in the interests of subscribers.
Now you know how to choose a target audience for your offer, how to set up VKontakte targeting and how to test for earnings through Vktarget.
Apply, good luck.
