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An article about the correct targeting in a contact. A guide to proper targeting advertising. My algorithm for selecting a targetologist for a project

Hello! If you decide to set up targeted advertising on Vkontakte, then a lot of questions immediately arise. How much money do you need to start an advertising campaign? Which settings should be selected and which should be ignored, given my individual project? How to choose images? Which image format is best? What is CTR and what is CPM, what is the difference and what to choose? What is retargeting and how to use it? In order to save you from unnecessary fuss, we will consider all these issues and not only in this article.

Skeptics will say: “I tried! Targeted ads don't work! I spent a lot of money." Dear comrades, the violin will not play in the hands of a hippopotamus! Tried - it did not work, does not mean at all that it does not work. So somewhere they made a mistake. Thousands of companies on Vkontakte use this tool and get clients every day. It just takes a little patience and skill.

In the meantime, here's this infographic:

I also want to warn people who are just trying online advertising. First of all, I recommend you such an advertising channel as, you should first work in that direction. Targeted advertising is more “long traffic” and in some niches it can still compete with contextual advertising in the rate of conversion of a visitor into a buyer. But in most cases, it is better to start with contextual advertising, and only then connect targeted advertising. And using a bunch of contextual advertising + Vkontakte targeting will help to significantly increase efficiency. I will talk about this in the next article, because now it will be difficult to tell you about all the subtleties, but I will give you some guidelines. So, let's begin.

To make it easier to navigate, we conditionally divide the whole process into 2 stages. Namely:

Training: basic terms, preparation for testing ads, creating an advertising account.
Customization: Let's go through the basic targeting settings, ad formats, compiling a test of pictures and headlines, and also choose strategies for impressions or clicks.

Preparation and terms

Some theory and numbers:

CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions, measured as a percentage. For example, from 1000 impressions, you received 20 clicks. 20/1000*100 = 2%. This indicator is important to consider when choosing a display ad format. When advertising per click, it is not so important, because. it does not affect CPC.

CPC - cost per transition. It is important to always take into account, otherwise you can go into the red.

We create an advertising account

Open the menu on the left "Settings" and at the bottom we look for the link "Advertising".

Click on the "Targeted Ad" button. "Create Ad". The first step is to create an ad, not an account. I suggest just creating an ad now, without setting any settings, just so that you have an ad account.

cooking pictures

You can choose two options. The first is to look for pictures yourself on all the resources available to you (from photobanks to a banal image search in a search engine), and then prepare pictures in Photoshop. Or you can use this mega convenient service, for starters, the free version will be enough. I will not dwell on the service now, if you wish, you will understand it, it is intuitive.

Testing images and headings

To set up a campaign more effectively, it is important to test images and headlines. For the test, we need to prepare. The test goes as follows.

Choose at least 5 pictures. We test five pictures with the same title.
And come up with at least 5 headings. We test five headings with the same picture.
After you test which images and headings were the most clickable, we combine the most clickable heading and the most clickable image. This way we get the most effective ad.

Ideally, you need to test at least 15 pictures and 15 headlines. But for understanding for the first time, five is enough.

Setting

To date, there are 5 options for advertising format for the site and group.

image and text. They are used mainly when you need to clearly explain what it is about right in the ad;
big image. This format is good because it attracts attention much better than the previous one. But there is a significant disadvantage - the character limit is only 25. You can also write text on the image, which significantly expands the possibilities of this option;
Exclusive format. In this case, your ad will be broadcast to the user in a single copy, without competitors. The downside is that it is twice as expensive;
Community promotion. This format is only suitable for communities, you cannot advertise the site using it. The key difference is that the user will be able to join your community without clicking on the link. Right in the ad there will be a "Join" button;
And finally a special format! If your target audience is over 100 thousand, I recommend trying it! It is broadcast not in the left column, like other formats, but in the user's news feed, which significantly increases the CTR. This option also only works for communities.

Choose an ad topic

You can basically skip this step, but it is useful to choose a topic and subsection. When the subject and subsection are set, moderation is faster.

Choosing the geography of our target audience

In this block, you can select the cities you want to advertise in, districts, metro stations and even the streets of your city. This is necessary if you have a local business, such as a cafe. In this case, you need to tune in to a narrow circle of people who do not need to travel halfway through the city to you. Here you can also cut off irrelevant ads. For example, you sell some rare product, having previously purchased it in China. In this case, it will be very useful to cut off large cities, because. they have a very good choice, and they may well buy the same product with delivery in their city, and often cheaper. To do this, you need to select in the "exclude" column the cities that you want to exclude from your advertising campaign.

Setting up demographics

With gender and age, everything is clear. But there are very interesting settings in this block, such as a birthday. We can tick the birthday box. And write in the ad, for example: "In honor of the birthday, a 10% discount." Such ads increase click-through rate, because. we personalize them. By choosing your marital status, you can also improve the relevance of your AC. For example, it makes no sense to advertise a dating site for family people. Well, at least often)

Interests

Well, we finally got there :) In my opinion, this is the most important and useful block in traditional targeting. So let's talk about it in as much detail as possible. So let's go.

Interest categories

The Vkontakte algorithm constantly counts the involvement of each specific user in certain categories of posts. For example, if a person constantly likes, comments, views a specific topic, for example, goods and services. With this setting, we will be able to target our ads for this segment of users! It's good right? :)

Communities

We can tune in to an audience segment that is in our competitor groups! That is, in fact, take away customers from competitors. Well, that's not all! A person who is a member of communities of interest can also be our potential client (for example, people who are members of business communities are potential clients for b2b services). But here you need to carefully select the communities that you tune in to.

App and website targeting

By targeting specific applications, you can also achieve good results in certain cases. For example, by advertising a toy, you can target people who already play similar games.

Exception

You can, for example, exclude people who are already your subscribers.

outlook

I do not use this block, because there was no need. Perhaps it will be useful for you.

Travelers

If you check this box, then ads will be broadcast to people who tag their photos in different places. Which increases the chances of finding a more solvent audience.

The next block "Education and work"

By tuning in to professions, you can also additionally tune in to an audience that will be interested in your product or service. For example, people who studied for a highly paid specialty in one of the elite universities are much more likely to have a high income than elementary school teachers. The same applies to people holding a certain position or working in a certain company.

Extra options

Retargeting groups. This setting is worthy of a separate article. In short, you can collect a separate user base to which your ad will be broadcast. This can be done either with the help of certain software, or by first installing the retargeting code on your site.
With the exception of. We can also exclude people we don't want to show our ads to. For example, to people who are already subscribed to our community.
Devices. If we choose owners of Apple equipment or owners of smartphones here, then we can even more accurately tune in to a solvent audience.

I usually ignore the rest of the settings in this block, simply because I have not encountered similar ones yet. advertising campaigns.

Setting price and location

For impressions or for transitions?

We need to choose a price for impressions and for clicks. When properly configured, ads for impressions are often more effective than ads for clicks. But there are exceptions, for example, if your audience is above 500 thousand, it makes sense to test ads for clicks. I recommend choosing advertising platforms only on Vkontakte.

Transfer cost.

The main mistake of beginners is that they leave the price offered by Vkontakte. That is why many consider Vkontakte advertising unreasonably expensive. In fact, you need to be guided by a simple formula: divide the proposed amount (transition or per 1000 impressions) by about 10 or so. That is, if Vkontakte recommends a price of 12 rubles for 1000 impressions, you can set 1.2 rubles. and if the impressions will be unscrewed normally (at least 1 impression per second), then we leave it as it is. If not, we set the price a little higher, and so on until the impressions turn off normally.

Click "Create ad", and then run the ad for moderation.

Sincerely, Vladimir Kondratenko

Below you will learn everything about how to properly set up targeted advertising in VK. The algorithm will be considered in full - we will begin to analyze the target audience and finish with the launch of an advertising campaign.

Target audience analysis

The main task is to find out to whom to offer the product according to the main parameters:

age
gender;
income
social status, etc.

You can also use the character method.

You need to answer yourself and a number of questions that will help to draw up a portrait of the target audience. Let's get started:

When can a client use your services?

If there is no understanding of where to aim, then with the help of this question you can find your target audience. Let's take sports supplements as an example. When are they bought? Could advise a nutritionist or trainer. Others saw shares in sports shops. Still others go on a diet, but at the same time they want to sometimes allow themselves low-calorie sweets. The more options, the better.

What hobbies of the client will help him become interested in the service?

Find overlapping interests - GYM's, swimming pools, work that requires staying in shape. So you will understand where your target audience is. It is recommended to use parsers. For example, Cerebro Target and Target Hunter are suitable.

What product do your customers need?

Thanks to this question, you will be able to find your competitors.

What else is the client interested in?

If a person has previously been looking for home exercise equipment, clothes for training, then he will most likely take a sports drink.

What should a person have to become your client.

If we talk about the above example, then a person should have a positive attitude towards sports nutrition.

What problem can your product solve?

For example:

Adjust your diet.
Lose weight.
Make healthy sleep.

Does your client look up to someone?

In this case, it can be famous people from fitness.

Transfer the answers to your questions for clarity in MindMap. Example:

Test the received segments in without fail. Find out if all customers like your product. Will every person who runs in the morning eat low-calorie food. Probably not.

You can also order SMM settings from a specialist and not delve into all these tricks.

Parsing the target audience

Now we need to do audience parsing. Cerebro Target is the most popular service for working with VKontakte advertising. He can:

highlight active users;
search for similar audiences;
look for people who interacted with certain posts;
find thematic communities, etc.

You can also use Target Hunter. Both services are functionally similar.

You don't need all the people, you just need a certain audience. You can narrow it down by:

geography;
social features;
interests;
work and education;
various additional options.

VKontakte targeting can analyze user profiles and show where these people are most often.

Setting up targeted advertising on Vkontakte

Click on this button:

Decide what you will promote: public posts, some website, application or public. Choose the right ad format:

Make an announcement:

Set up the target audience according to certain parameters:

Specify the payment methods and the price you will pay for the transitions:

The cost is based on:

target settings;
the number of ads that target the right users;
ad price.

When paying for impressions, the auction principle will work: than more money the more people will notice the ad. You pay for each individual ad impression.

Next, you need to name the company and click on the “Create ad” button.

Replenish the budget - for 1 ad at least 10 rubles.

Wait for the ad to be moderated.

It is forbidden to advertise tobacco, alcohol and drugs, politics, gambling, etc. look help VKontakte to learn more about the rules.

When moderation passes, the impressions will start automatically. You can see the statistics:

If the ad is rejected, they will definitely indicate what is recommended to be corrected:

If necessary, you can change:

the cost of 1000 impressions / transitions;
decor;
settings.

Choose a format

Advertising carousel

Then select the public from which you are creating the entry:

You need to write the text without links and create up to 10 cards. In each it is allowed to add:

title up to 25 characters;
illustration;
link to go;
price;
button.

Using this format, you can promote products from online stores or a line of a particular brand.

Universal notation

You need to select the community in the same way, and then add text and content:

In this format they are moving forward:

advertising posts;
posts on the wall of the public.

Recording with a button

Similarly, select a community and write no more than 220 characters of text:

In the snippet, you can upload an illustration and make a different title. There are also several options for the button:

to another site
to the community;
to the application;
phone number dialing.

Button+Video

Instead of an illustration in this format, you can add a video:

It helps:

view browsing statistics;
set up different targeting;
adjust to a certain internet speed.

Promotional post with an active link to the portal

Now with its help you can attract target audience to the site:

Advertising on the portal pages

Each object has its own format:

“Text and image” includes a title, object type, picture and text with a description:

In the “Big Image” everything is the same, except for the description:

In “Community Promotion” there is a name of the public, the number of participants or friends, a logo and several possible buttons:

“Square Images” contains a name, number of friends or members, a logo and two button options:

This format has a square cover in certain sizes, a title, a game rating, and a genre.

Which format is suitable for a start-up or small business

Specialists in traffic and setting up targeted advertising on VKontakte - recommends looking at the budget and the number of the segment.

Suppose you have many different target audiences, but the budget is 5000 rubles. Then you should start with teasers. You can create multiple variations of ads.

After that, the campaign can be scaled up - launch promo posts for certain effective segments. The sample should be increased to at least 50,000.

Launching a test campaign in VK

SMM specialists advise testing all audiences at the same time if the budget allows. 100 rubles - the minimum amount for each ad. Moreover:

once every 60 minutes you need to adjust the rate;
Disable ads with CTRs below 0.7 when they hit 1,000 impressions.
further conclusions can be drawn upon reaching the bar of 5,000 impressions.

Before disabling ads, look at Yandex.Metrica. Sometimes it happens that low-converting ads suddenly start selling.

We create creatives for advertising on Vkontakte

The first situation - you are selling products that are understandable to the client. He can choose from several brands. To increase clickability

you need to focus on the price if the product costs less than others:

if the product is expensive, then show the main advantages;
for consumer goods, use the words “Do you want?” or “Finished?”:

If these methods do not work, then there are two more effective options.

association method

Suitable if the product is sold in a complex niche, it has a narrow audience and a special theme. An example is the CrossFit blog.

The keywords will look like this:

endurance;
strength;
horizontal bar, etc.

You can use Yandex Wordstat to select associations. Then you know what your target audience is looking for.

Audience pain as an advantage

It helps when competition is high, and the product is massive.

First, write down all the possible “pains” of your client. Suppose he fears that the goods will be damaged during shipment. Or it won't come at all. Ideally, there should be up to 50 such “pains”.

After that, the client's fears need to be covered with benefits. For example, tell the person about reliable packaging if he is afraid that the goods will be broken during shipment.

Prohibited Methods

VK cannot:

use inappropriate or intimidating imagery;
advertise drugs, tobacco or alcohol;
refer to age, persuade or address by name.

Social networks are not only a communication tool and an entertainment resource. They also allow people and companies to talk about themselves. But to succeed in this business and attract new subscribers, you need a strategy.

A set of targeting mechanisms is built into VKontakte advertising, thanks to which you can recognize and even create images of ideal buyers, in addition, this is one of the cheapest promotion methods. If this is your first time setting up a campaign on this social network, then be prepared to go through the path of trial and error. Don't forget that this is normal, as experimenting and problem solving is part of the job of content managers and social media professionals.

It is important to learn how to effectively use behavioral patterns in advertising, as well as certain events that occur in the lives of users. Fortunately, VK now has a huge amount of useful information for targeting, and you can direct your efforts to both existing and potential customers.

What is "social targeting"

Social targeting is a technique to attract target audience(TA) through advertising in social networks. It is related to other types of lead generation, such as demographic or behavioral targeting. While pure interest-based targeting allows advertisers to find customers based on similar online behaviors (such as what sites they have visited), social targeting combines this logic with social network logic to help brands find people who are connected to the most typical representatives of the existing clientele.

Let's take an example. Targeted ads for running shoes may appear in front of the user's eyes because they spend a lot of time on sports sites. An ad for the same shoe on a social network will hit him because he is a friend or otherwise related to the person who bought the sneaker from the advertiser last month.

Any type of targeting involves dividing the market into segments and concentrating marketing efforts on a few of them, including customers whose needs and desires are most fully satisfied by your products / services. That is why it is important to first set up (Buyer's Persona) correctly, and only then move on.

Understanding the target audience

To set up an advertising campaign, you need at least a basic understanding of your target audience. Let's say you sell fitness overalls in the city of Penza. Your potential client is young women aged 18 to 35 living in the Penza region who are interested in clothing and sports. All these details will matter when setting up targeted advertising.

Conduct research on the target audience using analytical tools like Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics, or at least just look at the statistics on the visitors of your VKontakte group before you start targeting.

The good thing about social targeting is that users themselves provide information about themselves, and you can use it to interest the most relevant of potential buyers. That being said, it’s important to choose a platform that suits the particularities of what you have to offer.

Why VKontakte? Media potential

Social networks are becoming an increasingly powerful information tool: many get their news from there, and the degree of trust in social networks is higher than that of central television. According to data published by VKontakte, the number of monthly users who come in search of content exceeds the audience of Channel One (83.1% vs. 74.5% respectively), CTC (74.8%), TNT (68.5%) and Russia- 1 (69.9%).

This is a huge public, covering the whole country, and quite solvent:

According to Mediascope Web Index as of December 2018

What does it mean? A large VK audience consists of 70 million who regularly visit their profile and not only read updates, communicate, view and leave comments under photos and videos, but also find information about products and spend money!

It is a mistake not to use such a resource, and if you want to promote your products and services competently, then read on and figure out with us how to do it.

Advertising formats

1) Carousel - suitable for promoting goods and services, because it is a "flip" format, where you can include several images at once (from 3 to 10), text, price, address, call-to-action button (Call-To-Action Button, CTA);

2) Universal record - may consist of simple description, images and text, or also contain a gif, map, video or other types of attached documents (up to 10 attachments in total);

3) A post with a button — a picture + one of the options for a CTA button (“Buy”, “Go”, “Join”, etc.);

4) Collection of applications - relatively new option, which is somewhat reminiscent of a lead form: by clicking on an ad, a person goes to a profile that you can set up to receive the necessary information;

5) Website advertising is the most new format for advertising, as the name implies, third-party sites. The good thing is that it should not be associated with any community: the link directly leads all traffic to the desired site.

2. Advertisements(text-graphic block, TGB) is an advertisement that you all saw on vk. com under the menu on the left. It usually looks like a photo and text under it. No more than three such advertisements are displayed on one page. You can choose from the following subspecies:

1) Application - for making transitions to an application or game posted on a social network;

3) External site - to promote a third-party resource.

Targeting VKontakte

To get started, prepare a platform where people will “land” to whom you will show ads. If it's an external site, create a custom landing page with a single action goal, like buying a product or signing up for a workshop. To develop a successful landing page, contact professionals or.

If you are advertising, say, a community on a social network, make a special post that repeats the text of the advertisement and contains additional details. It is desirable to fix it at the top of the community page so that visitors who have switched from an advertising post immediately understand that they have come to the “address” and do not engage in unnecessary scrolling.

Step 1. Choosing a format

Go to your advertising account by clicking on the link https://vk.com/ads?act=no_office or https://vk.com/adcreate Click on the "Create ad" button, we get to the following screen:

Step 2. General design

After specifying the link and domain of the advertised object, you will be redirected to the design page, where you will need to enter a title, upload a logo and an eye-catching image, create a description, select an inscription on the button (for example, "Open" or "More"), and also come up with text next to button. In addition, to increase the effectiveness of your ad impressions, you will be asked to select a topic (auto, business, pets, sports, etc.). You are also required to indicate the age marking if the content has any restrictions on this parameter.

After that, the ad view after publication will become available:

Step 3. Targeting the target audience

1) Geography. The cost of clicks and impressions depends on this parameter. You can select the country, individual cities, and regions that are relevant to your business, or, conversely, exclude locations where you don't want your ad to appear. When choosing all of Russia, remove Moscow and St. Petersburg - this will reduce the price (set up a separate advertising campaign for them later). Additional settings for other types of ads, include geotargeting by city area, metro station, and street.

2) Demographics. Here you choose floor(any, male, female). Consider the characteristics of the public: male - the most solvent, female - the most active.

Correct targeting according to the age should be based on the analysis of the target audience. For example, if this is a blog about sports, then you will be of the greatest interest to the category 18-44 years old. By narrowing the selection, you reduce the reach of the audience, but at the same time direct your ads more precisely.

Birthday(today, tomorrow, during the week) - a column that has meaning for holiday goods, for example, flowers, gifts, sets of socks, etc.

Family status- not the most accurate column, because for various reasons people do not indicate their marital status or relationship status, but if you need to set a filter to only those who are in active search, you can do it here.

We recommend ignoring the first field "Interests and Behavior"(not everyone indicates the scope of their hobbies, and you will greatly reduce the circle of those who will be shown ads) and turn Special attention on the "Communities". Select really active, not dead groups, with an active subscriber base and include them in this list(in total, no more than 25 groups can be added). You can also exclude certain communities or target ads when a community is active (for example, when creating an event such as a sports photo shoot or competition).

Subgraph "Apps and Sites" makes it possible to show ads to visitors of certain sites (if the VKontakte widget is installed on them) and to those who have specific applications installed. The most “hot” traffic comes to specialized sites, corresponding to the characteristics of your target audience, and such targeting can be extremely effective. Monitor the most popular sites in your niche and enter them in this field. If necessary, disable the visibility of ads for users of other sites and applications using the filter "With the exception of".

Setting "Travelers" is needed in order to cover people who have gone abroad, but continue to use VK.

4) Education and work. A setting relevant for those who want to promote their products and services to students/graduates of certain educational institutions or people of specific professions. A filter that is questionable in effectiveness, given that people often indicate incomplete information, do not mark their own at all professional path or compose non-existent biographies.

5) Additional options. Allows you to retarget those users who were already interested in your site or group, but left or have not returned for a long time. Retargeting advertising campaigns are very effective because you further narrow the circle of ideal potential buyers to those who have already converted (followed to you, clicked a button, filled out a survey or bought a product) and again remind them of your brand or the need to complete the action they started.

Retargeting groups are created by uploading an existing contact database (TXT or CSV file) or by inserting a special JavaScript code (the so-called “VKontakte retargeting pixel”) into the source code of the site, which will track users of interest to you.

- another parameter related to retargeting, but by events. They will be needed, in particular, in order to exclude from retargeting users who have taken an action with an advertising post: positive (for example, following a link) or negative (for example, clicking the “This is not interesting” button).

Step 4. Post Schedule

Setting the time for ads to appear allows you to choose. You can customize your option if you know when the audience is likely to read your posts or make purchases:

Select working hours:

Or weekends:

But when promoting the community, you will already have more opportunities. So, there will be a choice between paying for clicks and for impressions. The latter is suitable for those who have limited funds for advertising. Reduce the recommended price by at least half. If you notice that the ads are working well and you have a large audience reach, switch to pay per click.

Turn on the limit of impressions to 100 per person if you do not want the effect of media fatigue: after some point, the annoying appearance of the same ad will tire those who were not interested in advertising and did not switch to it at the beginning or middle of the campaign.

Step 6. Payment and launch

To run ads, personal account go to "Budget" and click on the "Top up" link. Deposit money using any of the suggested methods: through bank cards, payment systems or terminals (option for small businesses and individuals) or through cashless payments(only for legal entities). You yourself determine the amount of rubles to deposit. After making the payment, don't forget to run the ad. Go to the "Advertising Companies" tab, change the status to "Launched" and make sure it's updated.

Requirements and rules

Before your ad can get to a potential buyer, it will have to be moderated. Therefore, consider the following nuances:

There are a number of things and services that are unacceptable for advertising on social networks (alcohol, drugs, weapons, adult products, gambling and pyramid schemes, healing, etc.).
It is very difficult to promote a number of VKontakte products and services, since many permits will need to be provided. This list includes advertisements for medical products, medicines, financial services, insurance, jewelry and fur, food, pawnshops, charities, lotteries, etc.
The text of the ad must comply with the norms of the Russian language, be correctly composed in terms of grammar, not contain profanity, correspond to the essence of the advertised object and the content of the page to which the link leads.
Images are uploaded to high quality. Negative or explicit content is prohibited.

Before starting a campaign, please read the Advertising Rules. If approved by the moderator, the advertising campaign starts automatically; if there are violations, you will be notified and you can correct them.

When the ad is running

After launching an ad, be sure to monitor its performance. You may need to change the image, text, title, time of appearance in the feed, ad format, and even targeting options several times, for example, make it narrower by launching separate ad campaigns for different genders, ages, regions, interest groups, etc. d. The more accurate the segmentation, the more likely it is that Vkontakte ads, which are perfectly targeted, will reach the right eyes and ears and you will get the desired conversion (which means your money will be well spent).

Monitor your ad's Click-Through Rate (CTR) to see what works best. Marketing in VK differs from contextual advertising, to which a “warm”, prepared audience reacts. Therefore, show your imagination and try to find an original visual and textual presentation that will arouse the curiosity of the user who habitually scrolls his feed.

Keep in mind that there is no single right kind of ad - after a while you will need to come up with a new one and put it through tests. If you don't have a large budget, experiment by putting in a small amount to start or by lowering your rates.

Conclusion

The challenge for a targeting marketer is simple: create customer personas and then give them what they're looking for in the form of an engaging ad post. However, keep in mind that you cannot rely on creativity alone. To stand out in the crowded social media feeds, it is important to be able to respond to user preferences and reach the right segments of your target audience. Therefore, audience targeting is a mandatory and effective component of successful social marketing.

Fortunately vk. com gives you advanced targeting options and you can find your customers through a whole range of categories covering demographics, user types and their interests.

Therefore, test your creative, find one ad that attracts the most attention, and then experiment with the audience settings in the ad account - this is the only way you will understand how to create effective and budget-friendly VK marketing campaigns.

High conversions for you!

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 in 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 functionality targeting advertising, I suggest first finding out what kind of fruit it is, and what it is eaten with. So remember what advertisements in VK 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 on the certain group 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 tools offered by the contact, you can special work do 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, because this species promotion just won't work for 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 points fast food, 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 tobacco products and alcohol
sex shops
HYIPs and financial pyramids

Agree that sell specialized industrial equipment 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 internal search vkontakte, as in the case of the context. However correct setting allows you to find the target audience for product PR and get rid of the meaningless 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 advertisement 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 " Proceed»
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 " 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 who are busy investment activity, trading on foreign exchange and stock markets, I sort the target audience, 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 if the user will scroll news feed 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, which 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!

Dmitry Dementy

You say that VKontakte advertising does not work well: some schoolchildren click on ads, the entire budget is spent overnight, but there is no result? This happens if you choose the wrong target audience. In this article, you will learn how to properly target Vkontakte in order to show ads to the right people.

How VKontakte targeting works

Imagine that you are advertising auto repair services in Smolensk. You can display ads in the most popular VKontakte communities and wait for a response. If the ad says "Car repair in Smolensk", customers will surely turn to you. The problem is that you will pay for ad impressions to residents of Penza, Irkutsk and Vladivostok. In addition, you will spend money on showing ads to users from Smolensk and other cities who do not have a car. Moreover, you are pumping money into advertising services for people who drive expensive non-breaking foreign cars. And you specialize in the repair of domestic cars, and you have direct deliveries of spare parts from AvtoVAZ.

In order to spend money efficiently and make deals, you should show ads only to Smolensk residents who have a car. It is desirable that the ads be seen by people with not very new cars, which are suitable for spare parts from AvtoVAZ. This problem can be solved by targeting the target audience.

With the help of targeting, you practically exclude inappropriate ad impressions. For example, don't spend money advertising a Pattaya holiday to schoolchildren who are still interested in football and puppets, and not walks along Walking Street. Targeting ads brings the following benefits:

Increase response: clicks and deals.
Cost reduction.
Reducing the cost of customer acquisition.
Preventing negative user reactions to inappropriate advertising.
Show ads to audiences of competitors.

With the help of this guide, you will learn how to target an audience on VKontakte.

How to properly target Vkontakte

Choose an ad format: Image & Text, Large Image, Promote Communities.

Enter a title and text, upload an image, select a theme. If necessary, you can set an age limit for impressions. At this stage, do not spend a lot of time on these actions. The task is to move on to audience targeting.

To use targeting effectively, you need to know your audience. To collect user data, research the market, survey real customers, use the buyer persona method. You can also read about it.

For the experiment, imagine that the company operates in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. You serve clients in all cities of the region, except for Zheleznogorsk. It is known that you are most often contacted by female office managers between the ages of 20 and 50 years. Another group of clients - IT people large companies, 70% of whom are men. Their age also ranges from 20 to 50 years.

How to set up geographic targeting

Target the audience groups suggested above. First, select the geography of ad impressions. Set the target to Krasnoyarsk Krai and exclude Zheleznogorsk.

How to set up demographic targeting

As mentioned above, your potential clients include women who work as office managers, as well as men and women who work in IT departments. Therefore, in the "Gender" section, leave the default value. Choose male or female only if you are selling a clearly male or female product, such as spinning rods or color cosmetics. Keep in mind that in this case, too, you cut off potential customers, for example, women who are fond of fishing.

Specify the age of the audience. Under the terms of the experiment, we agreed to target customers aged 20 to 50 years. This is a wide age range, so specify it unchanged in the settings. If the age of most customers is in a narrow range, such as 25-30 years old, try expanding your target group. Specify the age from 22 to 33 years old and evaluate the results of the campaign.

If necessary, limit the audience of impressions to birthday people.

Skip the "Marital Status" menu. Use it only in exceptional cases, for example, if you sell gifts for Valentine's Day.

When and how to use interest and interest category targeting

In interest targeting, you can select audience segments. These are users who are currently interested in a particular product and are ready to buy it. For example, an advertiser may show ads to people who frequently shop online, look after a car, or are interested in financial services. VKontakte classifies users into audience segments based on their activity on the social network and on external sites.

How to target community members

The idea is very simple: if you show ads to members of thematic communities, the response will be higher. For example, you can show ink cartridge refill ads to members of all related communities in the selected region.

To find suitable communities, use the VKontakte search. You can change the search criteria using the filter.

Also use the allsocial.ru service, with which you can search and rate communities. Be sure to exclude members of your community from your audience. Most likely, they will see the publication anyway.

Show ads to users of specific apps and sites

This task is solved using the "Apps and Sites" filter. Enter the name of the site of interest and save the options suggested by the system. At this stage, you can evaluate the potential reach and the feasibility of targeting the audience according to the selected attribute.

If necessary, block any sites or applications from being shown to users using the "Exclude" filter. Check the "Travelers" box if you want to show ads to users who visit VKontakte while traveling abroad.

What to do with targeting by education and position

Look for the target audience by education only if you are interested in graduates of specific educational institutions. You can also target users who have recently graduated from an educational institution.

Use position targeting as a last resort and very carefully. This method of targeting can greatly narrow the audience or add untargeted people to it. First, not all users indicate the position. Secondly, the target audience can be people who indicate all the places of work on the page.

For example, filter the audience by position if you want to show ads to specific professionals. For example, use this type of targeting if you sell dental equipment. Keep in mind that ads will not be seen by dentists who have not indicated their profession in their profile.

How to use retargeting

Users who are familiar with your business, product, website or VKontakte public respond to ads many times more often than a cold audience. This is a great reason to use retargeting.

To use retargeting, go to the appropriate menu in the VKontakte advertising account. Click the Create Audience button.

You can create an audience using a retargeting pixel or data from a file.

Download the database file email addresses, phone numbers, or user profile ids. Check out requirements for uploaded information or use these suggestions:

Use a CSV or TXT file.
Write to one address, id or phone number per line. You can also write data to a string separated by commas or semicolons. You can find out the user id using applications.
Specify the phone number in the following formats: +71111111111, 71111111111, 8-111-111-11-11.

You can also install a retargeting code on the site. In the "Pixels" menu, generate a pixel.

Copy the code and paste it on the site.

If the site is powered by WordPress, it is convenient to insert the code using the Head, Footer and Post Injections plugin.

Use the Edit menu to add/remove an audience or get the retargeting code again.

After populating your retargeting audience, create ads and launch your ad campaign.

What services increase the effectiveness of Vkontakte targeting

With the help of external services, you can improve the accuracy of target audience targeting and make advertising more effective. Pay attention to the following sites:

To increase the effectiveness of advertising, it is necessary to collect data on different segments of the target audience using one or more services. Save the received data in CSV or TXT format, and then create the appropriate retargeting groups.

Audience targeting is available in ad automation services such as Aori , Plarin , Sociate.Targeting . Targeting capabilities are standard here, but automation systems provide advertisers with the ability to simultaneously manage advertising campaigns on several sites.